Marionette
by The Rekizalb
Summary: Marionette is a young woman who has been given a second birth-as a puppet. Sasori's puppet to be exact. And now she must learn how to function with her new body as a human puppet and a weapon for Sasori. SasorixOC
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

_UPDATE: Listen, since I've had Marionette up for so long I've decided to do a bit of tweaking with it. I'm not going to change the story or anything big. There are a lot of small mistakes littered around the chapters that I'd like to fix. Also, some formatting changes. And I'd like to add more details.  
_

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**-1-**

Out of all of the people in the world, no one can really remember the day they were born. Your first feelings, the first things you saw, your very first movements in the world, are all but a mystery. Some people however claim they were "born again" in a philosophical term usually relating to religious or other lifestyle changes. In the very darkest corners of the world however, some people get the chance at birth twice, whether intended or not. Marionette was one of those people.

If only she could remember who she was during her first birth.

I will explain that, she was once a ninja. She was an average ninja, nothing special about her. She wasn't super strong, she had no amazing relatives, no claim to fame, and she wasn't even exceptionally intelligent. Marionette's first birth was born into a poor family in Takigakure. She only decided to become a ninja as a means to support her family's well-being, even though she was neither strong nor talented.

And this is what led to the first death of her first birth.

She arrogantly tried to become a powerful ninja. She took missions that were above her abilities with teams that didn't need her lagging along. Eventually on one of these missions, her team decided that she was better off dead and let her walk right into the middle of an enemy ambush.

As you can imagine, the group of rouge ninja attacked her all at once. The bruises, the cuts, the burns, every inch of her by the end of her treatment had become disturbingly disfigured. Her team allowed the rouge ninja to cut her down then took the opportunity to sneak attack them. For all the damage that she took however, there was still enough breath in her lungs to sustain her for a trip Takigakure.

She cried out to her team-mates, "I'm alive! Can't you hear me? I'm alive! I breathe! Help me!"  
But the four, who in her first birth's tainted vision all were a blood red clot, turned their backs and left her.

That is how Marionette's first birth died. She bleed to death from her injuries. A solemnly worded letter was sent to her family regarding her end. A modified version of her death was written up in the report, filed, and she was forgotten, only to rot on the floor of the forest she died in. Her first death's last image of the world was a sky full of blood red clouds.

That brings us to her second birth, Marionette.

Her body was picked up by a traveler and sold around until it made its way into the hands of a cold puppeteer who decided to give it a use. He used his jutsu to infuse a life into the husk that she became.

"Who am I?" she silently called out, the first words of her second birth. Her body had a black cloak with red clouds lying over her with a swinging dull light overhead that illuminated the clouds and gave them movement.

"You are a marionette." Her creator's voice responded from the darkness.

"What is my purpose?"

Her creator lifted the cloak from her and hung over her now breathing body, "To serve me, only me. I am your Master."

"Then I will serve you, and only you Master," she chanted obediently while gazing over to where her master was rummaging through a cabinet.

"I admit my Marionette, you are the first of my subjects that has displayed any form of conscience," he set a black cloak with red clouds and set of traditional ninja garments beside her and took a step back to face his creation, "I want you to get dressed."

Marionette looked down at the clothes that were placed beside naked and scarred body, "How does one get dressed?"

Her master rubbed his chin in thought, "So you need to be re-taught basic skills before I can put you to use..."

"Oh but Master, I want to be a use to you! Let me serve you," she hysterically called out to him.

"Learning will allow you to serve me. You must learn and continue to do so," he walked back over to her and lifted the garments one at a time, "I will _instruct _you on _dressing _today, and _tomorrow _you must do it yourself."

With each item of clothing came a new texture, a new experience for her. She had never worn clothes before in her second birth. She looked up at her master in her new layers, "What are these called?"

"_Clothes_, my marionette, you _wear clothes_."

"What do these _clothes _do Master?" she asked as she rustled around in them.

"It would _depend _on the _type _of _clothes_. Your _clothes _now are to _protect _your _delicate body _from the _elements _and to _display allegiance_."

Marionette seemed astounded by all of the words her Master spoke to her, "Will I ever learn as you Master?"

"You will, but it will take some _practice_. We will start with _reading _and _vocabulary tomorrow_," her master took two books and laid them beside the cold operating table she sat on.

"What will I learn today Master?" she asked, trying to make sense of the many lines and symbols she saw on the book covers.

"Nothing. It's _night_, the_ time_ at the _end_ of a _day cycle_. You must _sleep_ now. There is a _bed_ in this _room_ which you will _sleep _on. We will _work_ in the_ morning,_ that's the _time_ at the _beginning_ of a _day cycle_," her master put emphasize on any new words he said.

Through the darkness came a light, a light bright enough so that Marionette could see around her room. It was very quaint. The operating table that she sat on was at one side of the room and a window with closed shutters stood opposite her. To her left was her bed; to her right was a desk with several books on it. Above the desk was a locked tool and supplies cabinet. On the other side of her bed stood the door which her master, whose red hair she could see with the light, had just closed and locked.

Marionette looked at the ground below her; she reached out with her toe to feel it. Realizing that it would not hurt her, she sat her foot down on it, then her other foot. But as she slid off of the operating table, she fell onto the floor. Her newly restored muscles did not have the strength they once did, or the muscle memory that once allowed her first birth to walk.

She reached out with both of her hands, simply practicing how to move her fingers and hands as her first birth had. She waded on the floor for a bit until she reached her bed, climbing up onto it and into it. She laid there on her back looking up at the wood ceiling above her, like her first birth had during her final moments. Within a few hours of staring up, her body began to sleep and her second birth experienced her first dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

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**-2-**

Marionette's second birth experienced her first dream that night. She was surrounded by colors and she recalled being in the arms of a man who she could not see. He took her to places her second birth did not understand and his face made an expression which her subconscious classified as a smile.

Then the colors began to fade and the man held her, asking her to remember where they went. He chanted to her, "Remember, remember, remember!"

Then he began to disappear too. She was alone in a world with faded colors and a voice which chanted, "Find me, come find me!"

Then the lock on her door made a low clink and her master's voice called to her "Wake up!"

Marionette instinctively sat up and turned to her master. It was much brighter than it was during her second birth, so she could finally see the entirety of her small room. Her master shut the door and walked over to the closed shutters and forced them open.

"This, my Marionette, is_ morning_," he called.

Marionette put an arm over her eyes to block out the bright lights emitting from her window, "_Morning_?"

"Yes, _morning_," her master walked over to her, "When you _wake up_." He motioned for her, "Now get up."

Her second birth worriedly looked at her master and then at the floor, back at her master, then at her feet. She stuck her foot out again, hovering it above the floor. Then she moved her other foot above it as well, pushed up, and fell into a lump on the floor again.

Her master sighed looking down at her, "I suppose we'll need to cover walking too." She looked at him like a lost puppy and he held out his hands which emitted blue strings of chakra. The strings wrapped themselves around her and with great finesse, helped her stand up.

"What am I doing Master?" Marionette asked as she looked down at her feet.

"You are _standing_," he pulled the strings that controlled her legs to make her step more towards him, "Now you are _walking_."

"Why can't I do that Master?" she asked as she studied the movement of her legs and the feeling of her calves.

"You don't have the _muscle memory_ or _strength_ in your _legs_ to do that yet, like I said before, it will _require practice_." He continued to orchestrate her movements with his fingers, making her walk to the door and open it. Then continue out the door.

"Where am I going Master?" she asked as her master forced her down a long, dimly lit, hallway.

"You are going to _bathe_, then I will give you your_ first reading lesson_," he followed behind her down the hallway and into a room with a stone spring surrounded by candles.

"Where am I and what are those?"

"You are in the _bath room_. Those red lights are _candles_, those grey blotches are _rocks_, and the transparent layer above the _rocks_ is _water_."

Marionette paused in though, trying to comprehend what he was saying, "Will they hurt me?"

"Anything can hurt you, but this is safe," he moved his fingers, making her take a step into the water just to be sure, "Now you need to take off your clothes."

"Why? Will the candles, rocks, and water hurt them?"

"Yes, they will _stain_ them," he orchestrated her hands to undo the buttons on her cloak, folding neatly and setting it away from the water. Then came the rest of her clothes, her master guided her into the water with his chakra strings and made her sit down. He then released his strings.

"Is this what it means to bathe, Master?" Marionette asked, as she waved her hands around in the water, feeling the pressure building on them.

"Yes it is, I will be back, don't move." Her master left the small room with the door open.

Marionette observed her surroundings more, the flames on the candles drew her in, intrigued her. She slowly reached out for one of the candles to her side and felt the warmth as she drew her hand closer, but was stopped when a string of chakra pulled her hand back. She turned to see her master holding a pile of books and scrolls in one arm and orchestrating his strings with his other.

A blonde man stood beside her master, he seemed nonplussed, "So this is your new 'weapon,' hmm?"

"Yes it is," Sasori absently retorted as he drew her hand from the candle to a spot in the water by her hip.

"What's she supposed to do, pleasure your foes?" the blonde man cracked up as he said it.

"No, she is not a sex toy, she is a puppet. A human puppet who I am teaching," he released the strings from her arm and set the pile of books down by her clothes. Marionette looked from person to person, everything they said was going over her head.

The blonde man scratched his chin as he looked down at her thighs, "Well she certainly lacks the 'parts' to be a sex toy. Why'd you stitch it up anyway, hmm?"

"To keep her from being distracted from her duties by fools like you, Deidara." Sasori finally looked over to Marionette, "Please don't try to touch the candle again."

"But you said it wouldn't hurt me?"

Marionette could sense that she was beginning to irritate her master, "I told you not to _move_, and you_ moved_!"

"What a stupid weapon, hmm!" Deidara joined in.

Marionette lowered her head in shame, "I am sorry Master. I will not do that again."


	3. Chapter 3

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

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**-3-**

One thing that Marionette's second birth did remember was how to read, which made work for Sasori much easier. However she had a very short range of vocabulary which he amused himself with the idea that that was because of a lack of intelligence from her first birth. During the lesson he managed to slip in a couple of important words to her such as "chakra," "jutsu," "Akatsuki," "weapon," and "mine."

Then he taught her some very basic lessons on science and philosophy. He made sure to withhold any ideas that might jeopardize his control over her, such as "freedom" and "free will."

Then, finally, he taught her about anatomy, specifically the anatomy of her opponents; their weak spots, their weaknesses, how to subdue them. Marionette didn't quite understand everything he said, but she was learning. She was most confused about anatomy though, as Sasori had taken creative liberties with her own when he re-purposed her first birth's body. She was missing numerous organs; ones that he believed took up space or served a purpose that was not needed. So by the end of his elimination all she had left was a nervous, skeletal, muscular, respiratory, and cardiovascular system.

One of the first things to go was of course, her appendix.

Another thing Sasori noted was that she was highly curious. Like the incident in the bath room, she wanted to touch and feel everything she saw. That included almost every item in the tool and supply cabinet as well as any spare knife lying around. It was almost as if being born a second time had caused her to revert to the mental conditioning of an infant. He worried that she might possibly go through all the growth phases until she reached that of which her current body was, but at a rate Sasori did not know yet. So far though, she was a new-born.

"Master?"

"Yes?" Sasori returned from his thoughts to see what his marionette who was sitting on the floor by his workbench wanted. He noted that she had a book in her hands about insects.

"Master, do insects go to Heaven?" Marionette asked in what Sasori thought was the most seemingly innocent and childish way possible.

"Why would you ask me something like that?"

"Well...," she turned to a page near the end which mentioned the lifespans of different species of insects, "You said some people believe that when something dies, it goes to Heaven. Well if an insect's life only lasts a day, does it go to Heaven?"

"I think it would depend on what the person believes in," Sasori answered, then returned to his work.

"I think Heaven is full of insects," Marionette stretched her hands out to her sides as if trying to frame all of the many insects there might be in Heaven. She turned back to Sasori, "Will I go to Heaven?"

"If you serve me," he retorted without looking down to her.

"Then I promise I will serve you until my end, Master, so that I can go to Heaven and be with all of the tiny, little insects!"

Sasori shook his head to himself, "You need to be able to walk first." Marionette looked from her book to the floor, she was determined to conquer it one day and she wanted that day to be sooner than later.

Sasori suddenly dropped his tools for a moment, "Marionette, I need to get something from my room, please don't touch anything." He looked down at her, "I mean it." Then he swiftly turned and walked out, leaving his stool empty, which gave Marionette an idea.

When she was sure that he was out of sight, Marionette put her book down and grabbed onto the stool. She put all of her weight into it and attempted to hoist herself up. The higher her body got, the higher on the stool she would grab, until she had her arms flexed completely and hands firmly pressed on the top of the seat. While her feet had still not gotten used to the feeling and shape of the floor, she balanced her weight onto the chair and her feet, then slowly pulled herself into a standing position. She moved her hands to the top of his desk and waited for her master to return, hoping she would make him proud.

A minute later she heard his footsteps leading back into the room and once the door had opened all the way, she immediately called, "Master, I can serve you now!" Sasori stood in the doorway, not so much impressed. It was obvious to him that she would fall if her hands left the top of his desk and the pores she had left were oozing of leftover embalming fluid like her first birth would be oozing sweat. But at least she was trying.

"Take a step," he said absently, "Walk over to me." Marionette moved her foot from her side forward, almost like a ballerina. She pressed her weight down on it then slowly began to move the other beside it. Both she and Sasori closely observed her footwork. When she had her second foot in place, she began to push off from the desk ever so slowly.

Her pores continued to ooze as she continued to manage her weight and balance, Sasori egged her on, "Only two more steps." When she finally had both arms off of the desk she reached out for him, as he was perfectly balanced. He allowed her to use him to cheat off of this once and she slide her feet toward him, one after the other.

Marionette looked down to her feet, which were right in front of Sasori's, then she looked up to him, "I think I did it Master."

"This is a start, but you will need to learn how to keep your own balance," he grabbed onto her arms and pulled her back to the stool and made her sit down, "But it has barely been a day since you've awoken and you're beginning to walk, you're progressing quite well already."

"I...I am?" a large smile shot onto her face, "Oh thank you Master! I promise I will never let you down!"

He sat the tools he had gone to retrieve down on the desk, "We will continue to practice walking tomorrow." He reached into the cabinet above the desk and pulled out a small booklet, "In the meantime, I'd like you to read this. It's from the Suna Ninja Academy, they hand them out to their students, although it might be a bit outdated."

Sasori was quite sure she had reached the toddler stage.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

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**-4-**

Sasori kept his word about practicing walking the following day. He woke Marionette early that morning and helped her to the front door. When she opened it she was completely in awe of her surroundings.

"Oh Master, is this what the books meant when they mentioned nature?" Marionette crooned. Outside of the base where she had been born her second time, was a large forest bustling with life. A bright burst of sunlight shined down around them and made everything seem so magical to her. She took a few steps forward, breaking off of Sasori's hold and sat by a patch of flowers.

"Yes, this is nature," he sat down by her as she observed a beautiful set of roses which attracted a bumblebee. Marionette reached slowly towards the bumblebee knowing now that it, like the candle, had the possibility of harming her. Sasori noticed this and was about to pull her hand back when she recoiled it herself, realizing she might kill the bumblebee accidentally.

"Why must everything die, Master?" she asked while still observing the bumblebee.

"Not everything dies Marionette, some things, like art, are eternal."

Almost as soon as he said that, a certain blonde stepped outside as well retorting, "That is a lie! Art is fleeting, hmm!" The two puppets turned to see Deidara with a lump of clay between his hands. He began sculpting it together into a bumblebee of his own, "See." Then he let it fly around for a bit then detonated it.

The small explosion caused the bumblebee that Marionette had been watching to flee and she turned back to Deidara with a face with mixed confusion and hurt, "You scared it away!"

"I gave you a chance to see real art, hmm!" he boasted.

"She sees real art already, not the cheap parlor tricks you call 'art,'" Sasori began to argue with him, motioning for Marionette to return to her bug watching. He stood up and walked over to where Deidara was, "Why are you even here today anyway?"

"The big man wants an update on the jinchuriki hunt," the blonde said, leaning on the door frame, "You can't sit around playing with dolls forever."

Marionette watched them for a moment then turned back to the roses in front of her, the bumblebee might have left but they were still there. She looked back over to make sure neither was looking, then picked four of the roses, making sure to keep as much stem as possible, and began to fashion them into a crown.

"I'm not 'playing with dolls' I'm creating a new weapon to use on the jinchuriki," Sasori snapped. He looked back over to Marionette who was working on her rose crown, "She just needs some work, but she will be more useful than your little explosions will."

"I watched your little scene this morning, she can barely walk, how is she supposed to be useful in battle?" the blonde looked over to Marionette, "You can't kill jinchuriki with flowers and cuteness, hmm."

"I realize that. She's only been alive for two days and she's progressing at a nice pace. My Marionette will be ready for a fight with the jinchuriki even if I'm the one behind the strings."

Marionette finished her crown and propped it on her head. She looked around and noticed a bird a few paces away. Noticing that Sasori and Deidara were watching her, she decided that, to make her master proud, she would attempt to walk over to the bird. She placed both of her feet flat on the ground, side by side and pushed herself up with her hands. As she pulled up she continued to put more pressure into the palms of her feet until she had both arms off of the ground and was firmly standing. Then she continued to keep her feet flat and slid over to the patch where the bird was.

"See," Sasori pointed, "She's progressing even now."

"For now, hmm," Deidara walked back inside, leaving the two.

By then Marionette was sitting a foot from where the bird was, Sasori returned to her side, "You're beginning to walk on your own."

"I'm trying, Master," she seemed disappointed almost.

"Don't let listen to anything Deidara says, he's a stubborn child," he explained, sitting next to her.

"The book you gave me mentioned that most ninjas had jutsu passed down to them by their parents," she turned to Sasori with tears engulfing her eyes, "I don't understand, Master."

The absence of parents was something Sasori knew well, as his own had died when he was a mere child. His grandmother had been the one to pass on puppetry. But Marionette, he didn't know who she was himself and now he would never be able to. She looked completely different than the corpse that was passed onto him, her eyes were different, her hair was different, her own mind was different. He would have to heavily trace the origin of her body if he ever wanted to know.

"Don't worry about that, you're different than the ninja in that book," he justified. He looked back at her rose crown, "Those flowers will wilt soon if we don't preserve them."

"How do we preserve what's dead, Master?"

"With art," Sasori began to explain, "Because art is eternal, it never dies."

"How are the flowers art, Master?"

"It's not the flowers themselves; it's what you make with them and how you preserve them."

Marionette took the crown from her head and offered it to him, "How do you preserve them, Master?"

"I'll show you," Sasori said, taking the crown and her inside and to his room. Marionette noticed that his room was not so different than her own, except that there were fragile puppets hanging from the walls. She took a seat while he removed several items from his cabinet.

First he took a length of wire and measured her head, then cut and twisted the metal together and set it aside. Then he took a bottle of a white mineral substance and a packet of a gel like one and mixed them in a sieve. He began to explain, "The mineral is called borax, the contents from the packet are called silica gel. When mixed together they form a drying agent."

He took the rose crown and carefully undid each rose and then tied it into the new wire crown, making sure all of the ends of the stems met in the middle. Any stems that passed the center point were cut to size. Then he placed the crown around the sieve with all of the stems pointed into it.

"What will that do, Master?" she asked curiously.

"The flowers will dry, which preserves them of course, but it will take a day or so."

Marionette seemed nonplussed about it, "Does this mean the flowers will never go to Heaven?"

The question caught Sasori off guard, "The flowers?"

"The flowers lived didn't they, Master?" Sasori noted that she was worried for the flower's sake.

"Of course, of course they did." He also noted that she was beginning to show an understanding of mortality, she was progressing.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

_This story's become quite popular I noticed and it has yet to be flamed, which is appreciated. So I wanted to thank everyone who's been reading, or stopped reading, or was turned off, or enjoyed, or saw, this story. Thank you!_

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**-5-**

Once he had gotten Marionette back to her room with some new books to keep her occupied, Sasori left to do some research. Not away from the base of course, not without her being watched and he wasn't sure he could trust Deidara to do that at all. So instead he used the astral projection room to talk with the one who gave him the body- Kakuzu.

"What do you want Sasori," the giant grumbled from his outline in the dark room.

"I need the name of the person who gave you the corpse you gave me," the puppeteer spoke. The astral projection room was far enough away from where Marionette would not overhear anything they said.

Kakuzu's projection folded its arms, "Hasn't it been a few years? Whatever the case, you owe me one for this." He took out a pocket sized notepad and flipped a few pages in, "The man's name was Roishi. He lives in a shack in the forest outside of Takigakure," he lowered the notepad, "I don't know why you'd want to contact him, all of the corpses he collects are absolutely worthless at the bounty station."

"I don't need it for the bounty, thank you very much," he wrote everything Kakuzu had told him onto his own notepad.

"Must be for some puppet again," Kakuzu shook his head and sighed, "Kakuzu, out."

Sasori left the room and checked back up on Marionette, who was sitting alone reading what looked to be a book about anatomy again. She turned once she heard him enter, "Master, why aren't I like any of the ninja in this book either?"

She noticed the notepad in his hand, which he then immediately pocketed, "Not everyone is the same." He walked over to her and pointed to the picture of the head. "You have two eyes, they have two eyes, you have hair, they have hair. You have ears, so do they, a nose and a mouth."

He looked down to the rest of the body, "This is also a picture of a male." He turned it to the next page, "You're female."

"But I still don't look like them," she began to tear up again, "Master, am I different than everyone?"

"You're special, like me," he didn't want to have this talk with her this soon.

"I'm special?"

"Yes, you're special," he wanted to get her to leave it at that, "And special people are different. Most of my comrades are that way."

"Ok," she closed the book and sat it on the desk with the others, "What else will you teach me today, Master?"

Sasori looked away, he had to make his decision now; would he seek out this Roishi or let it go. Deidara was on the other side of the base and could watch her if he hurried, hell he could explain to her how the other Akatsuki's anatomies were different. But if Kakuzu's lead was bad or if he couldn't find anything about Marionette, he would have wasted valuable time.

"Master?" Marionette called, snapping him out of his thoughts, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine," he decided, "I will be back, I need to speak with Deidara for a moment."

"Yes, Master," she turned away and picked up the book on beginners poisons that he had given her.

Sasori quickly ran down to Deidara's room and banged on his door, almost as soon as he began to knock, the blonde who looked to have just woken up appeared in the doorway, "What is it this time, Sasori?"

"I need you to watch Marionette for me, for maybe a day," he commanded urgently, "I need to run a quick errand."

"You want me to watch your doll?" a wry expression plastered Deidara's face, "Why can't you just bring her with you?"

"She has a lot of studying to do and I can't have her running around on a wild goose chase with me when she could be doing something productive.

"So you want me to make sure your little doll doesn't fall and break while you're gone?"

"And you could tutor her," he suggested, "As long as you speak nothing of puppets. Do not tell her she's a puppet. Do not tell her I'm a puppet. Don't even mention art to her."

Deidara sighed in annoyance, "Well you'll have to tell her eventually..."

"Eventually is not today."

A few moments later Sasori brought Deidara over to Marionette's room. She looked back to see the two standing there, entirely confused, "Master, is Mister Deidara helping with today's lessons?"

"Sort of," he began to explain as he walked over to her, "I have to run a quick errand today, so Deidara will be taking care of you until I return."

"But Master, I could help you couldn't I?" Marionette panicked, grabbing onto Sasori's cloak for dear life, "Please don't leave me..."

He patted her head, "Calm down, I will be back. And when I am, we will begin practicing ninjutsu."

Her eyes brimmed with excitement, "Really Master! Oh I can't wait!"

"Only if you promise me you'll behave for Deidara."

She turned to Deidara who was still standing in the door frame, bored as ever, then back at Sasori, "I promise I will be good, Master!"

"Good!" he said, patting her head again, "I will take my leave now." With that Sasori left, pushing Deidara inside and closing the door behind him. Deidara took a seat on her bed.

A few minutes of silence later she asked, "What's today's lesson Mister Deidara-"

"Nothing," Deidara cut her off.

"But what about-"

"Nothing, hmm."

"You mean-"

"Nothing, we're doing nothing today," he laid back on the bed, "You can read your stupid books or whatever while I relax, hmm. That is today's lesson."

"But Master said you would be teaching me today?" she asked, feeling defeated.

"I don't care what Sasori said, hmm," he retorted while fixing the bed up, "I'm not playing teacher for you."

"I'll tell Master you didn't teach me," she threatened, but Deidara was not fazed.

"Ok, you do that; see if I care, hmm."

The idea that Deidara would go directly against her Master's orders frustrated her. When Deidara had turned away she quietly opened one of the tool cabinets and retrieved a hammer. Slowly but surely, she advanced towards Deidara, who attempted to sleep, until her shadow overlapped him. She drove her hammer right into him, causing him to immediately wake up and scream.

"You bitch!" he shouted as he pushed her into the desk. She slid down onto the floor and sat there, staring up at him with an empty look.

"Will you teach me now?" she asked, pulling the hammer back up.

Deidara grabbed the hammer from her and left, locking the door to her room behind him, "No, you're staying in there until your 'Master' gets back ya little freak!"

Marionette fell to her side and cried, "Come back, Master!"


	6. Chapter 6

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

* * *

**-6-**

A slow journey ensued for Sasori to the outskirts of Takigakure. It wasn't necessarily the distance that was a problem, but the fact that he had decided to lug his favorite puppet, Hiruko, with him in case of any resistance from Kakuzu's lead. By the time night had hit, he had just reached the border to Taki country.

Meanwhile at the base, Deidara was plastered behind the door to Marionette's room with Sasori's hammer, waiting for her next move. He put his ear to the door and listened. It seemed like she was asleep, but he wouldn't take any chances. Inside, Marionette was in fact asleep, and having her second birth's second dream. Deidara could hear from the other side of the door her shuffling around. He readied the hammer again, waiting for her to bust the door open or something similar any minute but instead he heard her shrilly cry; "Blood...BLOOD!"

In Marionette's dream she was standing in a forest surrounded by a multitude of corpses. Her hands were covered in blood and so were her eyes. All she could see was blood and bodies. She continued to scream but her screams fell on deaf ears. She fell to her knees and screamed, "I did not kill! I did not kill!"

Deidara began to hear thumping coming from her room, then tossing, then thumping, which caught him off-guard, "What is she fucking her bed, hmm?"

A singular voice began to come from the corpses, "This is your fault, this is your fault, this is your fault." Their mouths dropped open and began to sing the phrase over and over as they rotted and fell to the ground.

"Master, Master where are you!" Marionette closed her eyes and called out into the darkness, "Master, please...don't leave me here...in the dark...alone...I cannot...bear..." She began to feel hands all over her, pulling her to apart, but she refused to open her eyes, refused to acknowledge the actions. Deidara finally decided to investigate the screaming and slammed the door open, causing Marionette to wake up.

"What is wrong with you!" he shouted. Marionette looked to her hands which were clean and the floor which was void of corpses, "Well, hmm?"

Marionette looked back to Deidara who seemed out of his wits, "Did I do something wrong?"

"Yeah, you've been screaming for the last hour for no reason," he continued to shout.

Marionette put a finger to her lips, "Shah...it is still night-time, you might wake up Master."

"Sasori isn't even here what are you talking about, hmm?" he finally lowered his voice, "Besides, your screaming would have woken him up anyway!"

"Master has not returned yet?" Marionette herself began to worry. She pulled the covers up to her nose, "I'm scared."

Deidara relaxed onto the door frame with the hammer still in his hands, "What are you worrying about, he's probably fine. He said he just had to run a little errand, hmm."

Marionette threw the covers back down and began to get up. To this, Deidara readied the hammer again, causing Marionette to stare at him with a confused look, "I'm not going to attack you again; I just want to check up on the crown." She then walked past him and to Sasori's room.

"The crown, hmm?" he asked as he followed her with the hammer. He tried to think of what kind of crown Sasori might own, "Wait, you mean the stupid thing you were wearing earlier?" He walked over to the table where Marionette had wandered over to with the crown still set around the sieve and examined it himself, "Is there anything Sasori _won't_ try to preserve?"

Marionette touched one of the stems which was moist, "I guess it'll be another day." She sighed and walked to the door, then noticed Sasori's empty bed and slid into it. "I think it'd be safer if I just stayed right here to watch it," she yawned as she made herself at home in his bed.

Deidara looked over to her, "Sasori isn't going to like you sleeping in his bed while he's gone."

She sniffed the blanket and wrapped it around herself, "It smells like some kind of rare plant..."

He sighed and walked out, "It's your second funeral."

Marionette thought about what he had said for a moment then called, "Wait Mister Deidara!" Deidara walked backwards to the door and opened it a crack, "Why did you say _second_ funeral?"

"Fuck."

Back in Taki, Sasori had just reached the outskirts of Takigakure. He searched around in the darkness for any sign of life or at the least, an ambush of some kind. As he continued to maneuver Hiruko in the darkness he saw what he thought was a bonfire a ways away. He approached it with caution and noticed an old hag standing by it alone.

"Is that a member of Akatsuki?" the old hag called as he stared hard into the darkness where Hiruko was, "I thought Kakuzu wasn't stopping by this week?"

Hiruko continued to approach the old hag, "I'm not here for Kakuzu's sake."

"No, then why would you be in this part of the forest at night?" the old hag began rubbing his chin and staring down at Hiruko suspiciously.

"If you're Roishi, then I need information on a corpse you gave to Kakuzu."

"Ah, straight to the point, I like it!" the old man, Roishi winced, "Oh my, I forgot to eat my dinner. Give me a moment will you?" Roichi quickly tottered over to his shack and returned with a bowl of some kind of soup and a logbook under his armpit. He took a large spoonful of his soup, "Fresh and delicious~!"

"Is that...?"

"What!" Roichi held his soup to himself in a protective manner, "A man has to find some way to eat!"

"Why didn't I see this coming earlier; an old hag living alone in a forest collecting bodies?" Sasori was oddly perturbed, "You could just get food from the village instead of eating the recently deceased." This explained why the corpse Sasori had re-purposed to make Marionette had been missing a hand and eyes.

The old hag swatted the air by Hiruko, "Never mind my habits, what did you want again?"

Sasori sighed lowly in Hiruko, "I need information on one of the corpses you gave to Kakuzu."

"Well," he pulled out his logbook with his free hand and began to flip through it, "I've given Kakuzu about twenty-seven bodies over the last three years...you'll have to be specific."

"Well I recall a few parts were missing from it."

"Ok, ok," he flipped to the next page, "That eliminates...seven...four...elven. It eliminates eleven of them." He motioned at Hiruko, "Continue."

"The corpse was that of a woman."

"Now we're down to eight."

"You ate her arm off," Sasori continued, deadpanned.

"Shunei Gorex. Female. Long brown hair. Kunoichi of Takigakure. Does that seem right to you?" Roichi closed his book and returned it to his armpit then continued to eat his flesh soup.

"If I knew who I was looking for, I wouldn't have come down to ask you."

"Missing eyes?"

"That's the one," Sasori pulled out his notepad and scribbled down what Roichi had told him, "Anything else about her you can tell me, maybe where her family is?"

"Well...personally she wasn't that filling..."

"I don't care about how she tasted to you. Tell me where her god damn family lives!" he shouted from Hiruko

"Ok, ok," Roishi thought for a moment, "The poor corner of Takigakure I think? Nobody cares about the poor families of Takigakure."

"Any bloodline techniques?" he asked as he continued to jot down notes.

"Shunei was the only actually ninja in the Gorex family for two generations," Roichi continued eat and spoke between bites, "If they had any bloodline technique, they never did show it."

"Mhm, how do you know all this anyway?"

Roichi accidentally spat part of a half-eaten liver onto Hiruko, "Whoops..."

"Do you have some kind of technique where you eat ninja and know their life story or something?" he asked sarcastically

"Oh, of course not!" the old hag scratched the back of his head, "I was the Gorex family's neighbor back when I lived in Takigakure."

Sasori tried brushing the piece off of Hiruko, "And you willingly ate your neighbor's corpse?"

"Well, a man's gotta survive out there."

Hiruko turned and slowly walked away from Roishi, "That's all I needed to know."

"Hey tell Kakuzu I said 'Hi' alright? Maybe we can have dinner together sometime?" he called after Hiruko, waving a spoon in the air.

Hiruko just kept walking, slowly.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

* * *

**-7-**

"I didn't mean to say second you see. It just slipped out, hmm!" Deidara tried to reason as he sat at the end of Sasori's bed. Marionette had been hitting him with a barrage of questions since he first slipped the "second funeral" bit.

"I don't understand, you were wide awake?" she was rubbing the bottom of her chin in thought, "What do I not understand Mister Deidara?"

"Listen, it was nothing, just a slip of the tongue, I'm tired, you're probably tired. How about we all just go to sleep, hmm? Maybe Sasori will be back tomorrow so you can do your stupid lessons!" he was getting aggravated with her prodding him over and over.

Marionette turned away in frustration, "My lessons aren't stupid, Master said when I am finished them I will finally be able to fully serve him."

"Just go to bed, I'm tired. I'm not going to sit around and play babysitter for you until dawn, hmm!" Deidara then stood up and walked to the door, "Go to sleep." With that he slammed it closed so hard that the puppets and cabinets began to momentarily shake until she heard something fall.

"Mister Deidara be careful! Master will be mad if you break his things!" she called after him. Then she got up and walked to the other side of Sasori's room to investigate. The sound she recalled came from an ominous looking cabinet. For some reason, it was not locked up like the others. Marionette firmly gripped the door handles and flung it open.

Another shrill scream ripped out from the other end of the base, Deidara turned around and began to make his way back when a frantic Marionette ran into him, "Mister Deidara! Mister Deidara! I saw Master in a closet and he has no eyes! I worry he's dead!"

"Wait a minute," Deidara rubbed his head, "You saw Sasori in a closet, hmm?" Marionette nodded frantically. He sighed and stood up, "Fine I'll go look."

Deidara walked back to Sasori's room with Marionette sobbing behind him, when he finally reached the closet which supposedly held a dead Sasori, he had to laugh at how screwed he would be if he didn't find a way to rebuff the idea that Sasori or her were either possibly dead or puppets.

"Why are you laughing Mister Deidara?"

He turned around to Marionette and began his long explanation; "Well ya see, hmm...Sasori is a fanatic about puppets and he's an equal fanatic about himself. So he built a puppet of himself because he's so obsessed with his own looks, hmm." He picked up the Sasori puppet and stood it back up into the ominous closet.

He turned back to Marionette who was back in tears, "I miss Master so much..."

"You're so annoying, just go to bed," Deidara sighed as he left, making sure to gently close the door behind him.

The following morning a loud knock rang out on the door to the Gorex household. Their house itself was nestled between numerous other small ones that formed something of an alley that they called the Poor Quarter of Takigakure. An older man opened the door to Sasori, who had disguised himself in a hooded robe, knowing that a random cloaked Akatsuki member walking around in Takigakure would definitely arouse more than _some suspicion_.

"Who are you and what do you want?" the old man asked in a manner that seemed quite hostile.

On the way there Sasori had worked out and rehearsed a story to use on the Gorex family, "I'm a private investigator."

The older man obviously didn't believe him, "And what do you want from my family?"

"I'm investigating your daughter's death; I need to ask your family some questions."

"My daughter's been dead for three years, why would it take that long for a private investigator to ask us anything?" he crossed his arms and looked down on Sasori, still skeptical. Out of nowhere a frying pan came flying at the man's head and he dropped down to the floor in pain.

An older woman came out who seemed more sympathetic, "Oh please don't mind him, he's been taking it all very hard. We'd love to help you in any way possible," she opened the door for him and motioned for him to come inside, "please do come in!" Sasori took the invitation and stepped around the man who he assumed to be Shunei's father to enter the household. Inside was quite bare with a ceiling full of cobwebs but he noticed a number of framed items and pictures hung across the walls.

"Please make yourself at home," Shunei's mother called from the kitchen as she set out a cup of tea for him at the dinner table. Sasori took a seat across from her as she began, "Has anyone found her body?"

"Possibly," Sasori pushed the tea away, "She may in fact be alive at this very moment."

Shunei's mother winced as though her heart had just momentarily stopped and restarted, "She...she could be alive!"

"I said she may, but the problem is, I don't know exactly if it IS your daughter. Any distinguishable traits you can tell me will help me determine that; like what she looked like, age, any specific ninjutsu or weapons she had, kekkei genkai maybe?"

"Kekkei genkai..," Shunei's mother turned away hiding her tears, "Excuse my manners, this is quite hard on me too."

"It's alright, just tell me anything you know." Shunei's mother stood up and motioned for Sasori to follow her into their living room where a dusty case hung atop their mantle. She pulled it down and sat it on top of their coffee table, pulling out two simple boomerangs, "What are those if I might ask?"

"The Gendari," she handed them to him; "She was supposed to inherit them when she returned. They've been passed down the Gorex family for generations." As she spoke, Sasori could hear footsteps from upstairs headed in their direction.

"Mom, who is that?" the two turned to see a plain looking girl who appeared to be somewhere around Deidara's age with short brown hair standing at the bottom of the steps.

"Oh, Kanshi, this is a private investigator," Shunei's mother explained, but the girl, Kanshi, began to make the same skeptical expression Shunei's father had made towards Sasori at the front door.

She stepped down and walked towards them, "Why would there be a private investigator here now?"

Shunei's mother held her shoulders, "I know I thought the same thing, but he claims that Shunei may be alive."

"No!" she pushed Shunei's mother away, "Shunei's been dead for three years, if she had been alive she would have come back home by now!"

Shunei's mother grabbed Kanshi and began to comfort her while crying herself, "Neither of us knows what really happened." She turned her head back to Sasori who was still examining the Gendari, ignoring the emotional family moment, "I will hold onto any hope I can."

"Is that your daughter?" Sasori finally asked.

"Yes," Shunei's mother calmly answered as she resumed hugging Kanshi, "She may have not been by blood, but she will always be family." That made sense to Sasori, and explained why the Gendari had not simply just been passed down to Kanshi instead.

Sasori set the Gendari back down, for a weapon passed down by generation, they seemed quite useless, "How old was Shunei when she supposedly died?"

"Um," her mother thought for a moment, "Twenty-four."

Back at the base, Deidara was preparing himself for another day of babysitting. He packed up numerous kunai and chunks of clay into his pockets as well as Sasori's hammer, and then headed down to Sasori's room. When he got there Marionette was in the same position on Sasori's bed that she had been when he left hours ago, "Did you even sleep, hmm?"

"No," Marionette quickly responded, "Where is Master?"

Deidara face palmed, "You need to stop asking me that, it hasn't even been a day since he's been gone and you've spent every moment of it panicking, hmm." He was met with silence. "Don't even tell me how you believe that he's dead again."

"Mister Deidara, will you teach me any lessons today?" she asked solemnly, "I want to be able to serve Master when he returns."

Deidara gave in, "What do you want to learn, hmm?"

"How to fight."


	8. Chapter 8

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-8-**

"So what exactly does the Gendari do?" Sasori asked when he and Shunei's mother finally returned to the kitchen to talk. The more she spoke, the more pained she looked. At the same time however, she began to feel evermore hopeful that the strange private investigator across from her would find her daughter.

"It's a set of bladed boomerangs that must be awakened with every usage by one of the Gorex bloodline. Shunei was the only one left," she grabbed onto her teacup and took a sip, "Her biological father died a few weeks after she was born. The man you met by the door is her step-father and Kanshi's biological father. I married him a few years after Shunei's father died, she didn't like him." She began to fall into herself and cry, "I just wish I could've said goodbye to her. The day she left for the mission..." She looked directly into Sasori's eyes, "We argued. I told her not to go, not to fight. But she was impatient, stubborn."

"Did you think maybe she had run away instead?"

"I did, at first," the old woman stood up and walked over to the sink where a Takigakure headband sat in the window, "But when they sent this back to me and I saw the blood that had stained it...if she did run away, I just want to hold one last time and tell her I love her. I know I'm getting on in age and she's a full grown adult now."

Sasori looked over to the Gendari that still sat in its case on the coffee table. He had thought about stealing them to bring back to Marionette, but at the same time, what if she needed further instruction on how to use them? Perhaps he would bring her back to the Gorex household later, "That's all the information I needed." He stood up and began to walk to the door when Shunei's mother stopped him.

"Wait stranger," she held the headband out to him, "Please give Shunei this if you find her." Sasori took the headband from her and left.

Back at the base Deidara decided to humor Marionette by teaching her how to fight. He allowed her to punch and kick him as she was too weak to do any real damage without a weapon such as Sasori's hammer. "If you're this weak, how do you plan to serve Sasori, hmm?" he taunted her.

"I will get stronger!" she continued to punch, one fist after the other.

"Then give me all you have, hmm!" he egged her on. Marionette continued to take the taunting and quickened her fighting pace until Deidara's body disappeared into a cloud of smoke. He called down from one of the branches of a nearby tree, "You need to be able to use ninjutsu too."

Marionette thought back to the book Sasori had given her and the hand seals that it illustrated, "Ram...boar...ox...dog...snake." She closed her eyes and visualized the illustrations, emulating them over and over again.

"Ready, hmm?" Deidara called from the branch as he brought out several kunai. Marionette nodded and readied herself. Deidara slung the kunai towards her and with lightning speed; she used the Body Replacement Technique, appearing on the branch as well. Deidara turned behind him to see her leg about to strike him and jumped off the branch. Marionette followed him down with both legs pointed down, but he used the Body Replacement Technique to get out of the way.

"Maybe Sasori was right, you're making progress," Deidara called to her from the other side of the small field.

"Could I serve Master in this state?" she called back, "Am I useful?"

"Well you only learned one E-rank jutsu so far...Sasori's probably got a bunch of things he'll want to show you and equipment for you to lug around," as he spoke it began to rain down on them, "I guess that ends today's lesson."

The two retired inside, Marionette to her room and Deidara to his own. She sat down on her bed and reached over to the operating table where she had placed the academy training manual Sasori gave her. Inside were a number of lessons on the different weaponry one was to have mastery over by the end of their time at the academy as well as all E-rank jutsu. The last part she decided to focus on. She began to practice all of the 12 basic hand seals. Performing them over and over until her muscles began to form muscle memories for each of them.

By nightfall Sasori had returned to the base. He peeked into Marionette's room to find that she was asleep with the manual lying on the floor by her bed with the pages referring to hand seals still open. He pulled out the Takigakure headband that Shunei's mother had given him and tied it around her neck, gently as not to wake her. Still asleep, she moved one of her arms to her neck to feel it, and then dropped it again.

Sasori then walked over to Deidara's side of the base and knocked on his door to hear him call, "What is it now, hmm?"

"I hope that you aren't addressing that to me," Sasori retorted. Almost instantaneously Deidara opened the door to him.

"You're finally back, hmm!" he cried for joy, "I never want to babysit your little puppet again!"

Although he was not much surprised to hear the blonde say that, he still asked, "What? What'd she do?"

"She was just...annoying, hmm. Every other hour she was crying for you," Deidara remembered the hammer and took it out, handing it over, "And she slammed me with this."

"Interesting," he pocketed his hammer, "That's it? How were her lessons?"

"Well hmm...," the blonde thought back, "She learned the Body Replacement Technique and I had her practicing punches and kicks."

"If that's it, you can go now," Sasori called then turned and walked off to his room. Deidara decided to use the time to quickly disappear before Sasori noticed anything off about his room. He ran to the entrance, crafted a clay bird, and flew off. Sasori on the other hand opened his bedroom door to see his bed in a state of disarray and his replacement puppet body lying on it.

To put it simply, he did not want to know why it was there, just if Marionette had seen it.


	9. Chapter 9

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-9-**

"Master?" Marionette caught eyes with Sasori upon waking up the next morning. Instantly she had her arms thrown around him and was crying on his shoulder, "Oh Master you don't know how terrible it was without you! I missed you so much!" She moved her hand along his back, "Master you feel so lumpy?"

Sasori grabbed her shoulders and pulled her off of him, "Marionette."

His forcefulness had her worried, "What's wrong Master?"

"Did you have anything to do with my bed being disarranged?" he asked in a serious tone.

"Oh Master, that was me and I used your puppet to help me sleep," she admitted, "Mister Deidara slammed your door so hard that your puppet fell out of that special closet you kept it in and I thought it was real but Mister Deidara told me it was because you liked looking at yourself."

Sasori was at odds with what to say in response, "You slept with my puppet and he told you I liked admiring myself?" He held his face with his palm in disgust.

"I couldn't fall asleep though, Master," she said ashamedly, "I had a nightmare and Mister Deidara said if you found out I was in your room you'd give me a second funeral...I just wanted to check on the crown at first."

"He told you I would give you a second funeral?" he sighed, it seemed that he would have to explain the truth to Marionette sooner rather than later, and sooner meant today.

"Yes Master, but he said it was just a slip of the tongue, honestly," she reassured him.

"Marionette, go sit on the operating table for me please." He did not look at her, only at the floor, but pointed to the empty table.

This worried her, "Master, are you going to give me a second funeral?"

"No, just do as I say," he brushed her away and grabbed the stool, propping it across from the operating table and sitting on top of it. Marionette obeyed and sat on the operating table facing him, "You know how I told you I had an errand to run?"

She hesitantly recalled, "Mhm, yes Master, and you told Mister Deidara to watch me, but you said it would be short."

"Well," he had trouble finding the right words to explain it all to her, "I went to Takigakure to find out if you had a kekkei genkai."

"Takigakure? But this isn't Takigakure? Do they have a big library in Takigakure?" she held her hands out as though to frame together a giant room with hundreds of books on nin past and present.

Again he sighed, "No, I went to find who you were before your birth."

Marionette was completely confounded by this, "What, why?"

"Marionette, do you remember the other day how I told you that you and I were special?" Sasori tried to put it all together as nicely as he could but the more he spoke, the tenser the air around him became.

The more she spoke, the worse Marionette felt, "Yes..."

Sasori took in a deep breath and then quickly spit out; "Well that is because you and I are both puppets."

Hearing that left Marionette's mouth agape, the thought traumatized her, "But Mister Deidara said..."

"Deidara was supposed to keep you from seeing my replacement body, but once again, he failed in that regard," he could see the confusion in her eyes, "Marionette, you were once a ninja from Takigakure. You died, but I revived you as a puppet."

"No, no, no, no, no!" Marionette began to bite into her fingers. She shrilly screamed and grabbing her head, twisting around, "This isn't true Master, tell me you're lying!"

Sasori didn't want to affirm it but he had no choice at this point; "No Marionette, it's all the truth."

"I...I was denied Heaven! No, no, no, no, no!" Without warning, Marionette sprang from the operating table and rushed past Sasori. Dazed and confused, she raced for the entrance as she could as fast as she could. Into the forest she ran without looking back. Sasori made no attempt to stop her tirade, but only watched. He knew she would come back.

Several hours of straight running had completely exhausted all of Marionette's energy. She collapsed onto a tree and tried to catch her breath. Her left hand was filled with blood from having bitten the fingertips as aggressively as she ran, the other hand was chipped. She took her bleeding hand and felt up her chipped one, the texture of it felt wrong to her. She ran her hand down to the end of her forearm and ripped it off. Between her legs her old forearm squirmed around and then died.

When it stopped moving, Marionette picked it up to examine it. She noticed that middle of the palm had a false opening and forced it open, a tube moved out of it and a small flame spurt out of it. She blew out the flame and closed the palm then looked into the end where a symbol of a red scorpion behind a white background was. She remembered that same symbol from the puppet of Sasori that she had snuggled with in an attempt to sleep two nights before.

"So...I was only a puppet," tears of the many mixed emotions that ran through Marionette's head raced down her face. She reattached her false arm and leaned back into the tree trunk. Looking around the forest to scope as much of the area as possible, she realized that her eyes weren't at all pained. To this she took her left index and middle fingers and clawed her left eye out. Blood began to spurt out of the empty socket, but as she moved the eye around in her palm, she noticed the red scorpion symbol on the direct back of her eyeball. She put her false eye back in and tried the same thing with her right eye, which she found also had the symbol.

"Is anything of me real?" she lurched into herself and fell back to the ground in tears, "Am I just but a creation of Master's? Does my heart at least beat?" She pushed off of the tree and stood up, continuing a slow walk deeper into the forest. The more steps she took the more she felt the jingling of the headband around her neck. Marionette finally ripped it from her neck to examine it.

The Takigakure symbol was engraved in the front and the name crudely scratched on the bottom; Shunei Gorex. Marionette did not know who this Shunei Gorex person was, but she was in possession of her headband she assumed. If what Sasori had told her was true and she was once a Takigakure ninja, she might have known this person and perhaps they could help her.

Into the next morning Marionette kept walking in a single direction without stopping, without sleep. She was unsure if Sasori had any plans to follow her out, she began to wonder if he cared. The farther she wandered the less she believed he did. When noon struck she had found the shack of the old cannibal Roishi. He stood outside by his extinguished bonfire, staring knowingly at her as she walked towards him.

"This is the second time this week that a member of Akatsuki has graced with me with their presence," he called as she drew near, "And this one looks oddly familiar." She looked the old man over, bald with a white mustache, simple robes, he seemed oddly familiar.

"Excuse me," she asked between breaths, "Do you know the way to Takigakure?"

"Takigakure?" he scratched his chin and looked at her in amazement, "Why it's right there!" He pointed over to a giant tree that wasn't far from his shack, "Another Akatsuki member stopped by there not too long ago, are you looking for him?"

"No," she breathed. She assumed that he was talking about Sasori, "But if you know where he went, I would appreciate it."

"Well, he seemed to be looking for someone named Shunei Gorex; I pointed him to her family in the poor quarter of Takigakure." The fact that Sasori had been looking for the same person surprised her. The old man looked down to Marionette, "Do you need a map?"

She sat down on the ground, "That would be most appreciated." The old man retreated inside his shack for a moment. In the meantime Marionette looked around, examining the small, quaint settlement.

"Here you go," he called as he returned, handing the map down to her, "And a word of advice-I'd ditch the cloak if I were you, it might draw some unwanted attention." Marionette did not understand what he meant, but decided to listen and threw off her cloak onto the ground, then walked in the direction of the giant tree.

"Come on back now~!" the old man whistled as she walked away. Marionette turned to him for a moment, noting the ominous presence of the old man, then walked away.


	10. Chapter 10

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-10-**

Deidara dropped down from his clay bird that afternoon and walked inside. It was oddly quiet in the base for once, which surprised him. He walked to Sasori's room and noticed that he was alone and working on an alteration for one of his puppets, "It's quiet, is Marionette still sleeping, hmm?"

"No, she ran away," Sasori nonchalantly answered back as he continued to work.

The blonde took a step inside and confoundedly asked, "You don't seem very shocked by this, hmm?"

"No, all children want to run away from their families at some point. It's all a part of growing up," he sat his hammer down and stopped working, "But they always come back."

"But she isn't a child, she's a puppet, what makes your sure she'll come back, hmm?"

Sasori pushed the puppet he was working on to the side and pulled over another one, "Marionette does not possess the mentality of her age yet. She is going through something of an adolescent phase now, a period of self-discovery. By the time she mentally progresses into adulthood she will return, a changed woman no doubt."

"You don't think she'll like wherever she is better, hmm?" Deidara personally hoped that the puppet girl would never return and that things would remain quiet around the base-for good.

"If she does not return eventually, I will go find her myself," he gave his puppet a few whacks with his hammer, "I have a good idea where she'll be."

That was the Gorex Household to be exact. Marionette stood at the front door unsure if she should knock or not. She hoped that the old man was right and that this was the right place, but at the same time she wasn't sure how these people would treat her. She was a puppet after all. Instead of wasting time, she decided to knock anyway. The door flung open and a middle aged man who seemed hostile towards her stood in the doorway, making her wish she never knocked.

"Who are you and what do you want?" he sneered. He himself had short brown hair which seemed to be growing greys and large bags under his eyes. Other than that, he was quite homely and plain.

"I wanted to know if I could speak to someone named Shunei Gorex," she asked. The minute she spoke the name the man's jaw dropped and his eyes flared.

"Is that some kind of joke!" he roared.

Marionette didn't understand what the matter was, "I noticed the name was engraved on this headband." She handed the headband over to the man whose nostrils again flared when he read the name.

He handed it back to Marionette, "How did you get that?"

"I found it tied around my neck," she tried to explain even though she didn't quite know herself.

"Hmm," the man glared at her comically. Out of nowhere a frying pan was launched towards him, he ducked and it smacked Marionette in the skull, causing her to be knocked out cold.

When Marionette awoke, she was lying on a dirty couch inside of a plain looking room. A middle aged woman held out a cup of tea to her, "Thirsty?" Marionette shook her head and the woman took a seat next to her, "What brings you to the Gorex household young one?"

"I'm trying to figure out myself you could say, I was told that I was a ninja in Takigakure and I found this headband around my neck," she held the headband out to the woman, who winced the minute she recognized it, "I was hoping I could talk to the owner, maybe I knew them once?" The woman doubled over, sitting the cup of tea on the coffee table nearby and beginning to cry. Marionette sat up and asked the distressed woman, "Are you well?"

The woman stopped sobbing for a moment and wiped her eyes, "I'm sorry, I just recognized the headband and it brought some painful memories." She accepted the headband from Marionette and held it delicately.

"Can I speak to Shunei?"

The woman tightly clutched the headband, "I'm afraid Shunei isn't here."

"Oh," Marionette tapped a finger onto her chin, "Could I wait until she returns?" Without answering the woman stood up and walked to the mantle. She grabbed onto the weapon case and took it off of the wall, setting it on the floor and taking one of the boomerangs out.

"Excuse me?" Marionette called over to her, unsure if the woman was paying any attention to her. The woman held out the boomerang to Marionette, which she looked at confoundedly, "What is this?"

"Could you hold this in your hand for a moment?" the woman asked as she continued to cry. Marionette wasn't sure what was going on, but she accepted the boomerang from her with her flesh hand.

"Is this anyway?" she asked as she examined it. Out of nowhere, two raised spikes lurched from the sides of the boomerang and into her veins, pulling out blood and filling up a v-shaped symbol on the boomerang. Marionette looked up at the woman frantically, "What is this? What's going on with my hand!"

The woman only cupped her hands over her mouth and continued sobbing out of what Marionette believed now to be joy instead of sorrow. The spikes stopped absorbing her blood once the symbol was completely red and a long curved blade grew from the boomerang.

"Answer me woman!" Marionette shouted, waving her bleeding arm towards the woman who continued to cry. In response, the woman grabbed Marionette into a hug and continued to weep.

"Welcome home Shunei."

Marionette pushed off of the woman with her free arm, "What are you talking about? I'm not Shunei, I'm looking for her!"

"No, you don't understand," the woman said as she wiped her eyes, "The boomerang in your hand is a weapon called the Gendari. It's been passed down the Gorex family for generations and only responds to those of Gorex blood. It latched onto you because you possess that blood."

Marionette stared wide-eyed at her as she examined her arm with the Gendari in it as well, "I'm a Gorex?"

"Yes," a wide smile grew on the woman's face, "You're my long lost daughter Shunei Gorex. When I noticed you had the headband I thought you might be, but when the Gendari accepted you it affirmed my suspicion."

"I can't be a Gorex," Marionette shook her head, "There must be a mistake, I was dead."

The woman ignored Marionette's comment, "I've missed you so much Shunei. It's been three years I've sat awake worrying about you. When they told me you died I lost all hope. But here you are, standing before me with the Gendari."

Marionette let the weapon drop from her hand, although she didn't want to, she slowly began to believe everything the woman was saying, "I'm not Shunei...just a puppet made from her."

"The Private Investigator was right that you were alive all along," Shunei's mother continued, this comment caught Marionette's attention.

"Private Investigator?" she assumed that that was the pretense under Sasori's visit.

"Oh yes, this nice hooded man said he might have known your whereabouts, I gave him your headband to give once he found you," she pulled back again, "I assumed he gave you it and sent you back here."

Marionette threw her hands onto the sides of her head and shouted, "Have you heard anything I've said woman!"

"No," Shunei's mother politely admitted.

"I don't know who the fuck I am!" she shook her head around, "I'm a puppet and the man who came to talk to you the other day was not a Private Investigator, he was my puppet master!"

"Oh...he was quite nice, we should invite him over for tea," the old woman said as she took a drink of her tea.

"No!"


	11. Chapter 11

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

* * *

**-11-**

A few hours later Marionette had been dragged upstairs to Shunei's old room which was oddly preserved. There was a small shrine dedicated to Shunei sitting on the dresser across from the bed. In the middle sat a picture of what she assumed was Shunei. Marionette sat back against the wall on the bed and stared over to the picture intently, not noticing that someone had opened the door.

The visitor stood between Marionette and the picture, "Is it true, are you Shunei?" Marionette looked up to see a young girl who seemed to be around Deidara's age with short brown hair and dull brown eyes.

"I'm not Shunei, I am a puppet made from her remains," Marionette tried to explain even though her previous attempts with Shunei's mother had all failed.

The girl took a seat next to her on the bed, "So you did die. How did you become a puppet? Did you remember us?"

"I don't know the process used by my Master, but I noticed that a few of my appendages are false," she looked down to her false arm, flexing the fingers, "When I first awoke I knew nothing about anything, my Master had to teach me everything."

It seemed that the girl was actually listening to what she was saying unlike the rest of the home's occupants, "Well stranger, I am Shunei's step-sister, Kanshi. It's nice to have you back even though you might not completely be Shunei."

"I'm not sure how I feel about being here yet," the puppet girl admitted, "What was Shunei like anyway?"

The idea of describing her late sister made Kanshi laugh, "Well she was stubborn that's for sure! She didn't want to waste her life sitting around and settling down, she wanted to be a powerful ninja."

"And was she a powerful ninja?"

Another laugh erupted from Kanshi, "No, but she tried...and that's all that mattered."

"Did she have any friends?"

"Well, we were close. Shunei hated most of her peers, especially the boy my dad was trying to sell her off to marry," she pointed to the ring that sat on the shrine, "That's her engagement ring."

Marionette got up and picked up the ring to examine it, noting that it was cheaply made, "I imagine that didn't sit too well with her."

"Oh of course not! Mother tried to bargain with her, saying that once she was married she'd give her the Gendari but she ran off. That argument was the last time I saw her actually," Kanshi mimicked her, standing by the shrine. She looked from the picture of Shunei to the puppet girl, "You don't look much like Shunei actually. Did your master change your appearance on purpose?"

"I don't think I will ever know, he never told me before I ran away," she admitted, beginning to feel a bit homesick.

"If he brought you back to life and taught you, why did you run away?"

A strange pain swelled in her heart, "I...I do not know, I was upset I think. He had just told me the truth and I...I thought I should've been dead...because the dead go to Heaven and I wanted to be there." She thought back to her short time at the base, "But maybe...maybe that was Heaven."

Kanshi put a hand on the puppet girl's shoulder, "It's alright, you can go back if you want to."

"It's not that simple, I can't just go back," she turned and moved away from Kanshi, "I shouldn't have left in the first place, I disobeyed Master. I cannot simply go back."

"If it means anything to you," a small smile grew on Kanshi's face, "I'm glad you came back."

The following morning Marionette was awoken by someone shaking her, she hoped that it was her Master and all that had transpired was simply a dream, but instead she saw Shunei's mother, "Wake up Shunei! It's morning and your fiancé is downstairs waiting to see you."

Marionette's face bunched up into a scowl, "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not Shunei for you to get it through your thick skull!"

Shunei's mother seemed to once again bush her comments off, "I brought you your favorite, black tea."

"I can't eat tea I'm a puppet, woman!" she flung her blankets to her feet and walked out of Shunei's room. The woman followed her with the cup of tea downstairs into the living-room. A well-dressed man sat on the couch drinking a cup of tea. Marionette only glared at him as he mother flung around her side, "Don't you remember Shunei, he's your fiancé!"

"If I were Shunei, which I'm not," she pointed to the man sitting on the couch, "I wouldn't want to marry him either."

"Well her rude mouth is still intact," the man judged as he stood up, "But she looks different? Short orange hair, scars all across her face, orange eyes. Did you get a face-lift Shunei?"

The more either Shunei's mother or fiancé spoke, the more aggravated Marionette became. She wanted so desperately to plunge the Gendari into the two of them, "Why won't anyone listen to me!"

"I'll take her Mrs. Gorex," Shunei's fiancé declared as he grabbed for Marionette's arm. She pulled away from him.

"I'm not Shunei and you are not my fiancé!" she shouted. As she did so, Kanshi came downstairs to see what the commotion was, all eyes fell on her.

"Actually," he scratched his chin, "I think I'll take the smaller one actually," Shunei's fiancé then declared as he grabbed Kanshi's arm to everyone's surprise.

Marionette frantically looked from person to person, waiting for Shunei's mother to object but instead, she gave her a kiss on the forehead and waved her off, "Good luck my daughter!"

Marionette's jaw just dropped as Shunei's fiancé walked off with the young girl. She then turned to Shunei's mother with a face filled with disgust grabbing the old woman's shoulders and shaking her frantically, "How could you let him do that!"

"But Shunei, Kanshi went for the good of the family," the woman simply reassured her, "A necessary sacrifice."

Marionette scowled and let go of the woman then turned to the Gendari and remarked, "How much did you benefit from that transaction?"

"Kanshi will be the housewife to one of the richest families in Takigakure. He will be able to support her and their children in ways our family would have never been able to," she reminded her, "That could've been you."

"And that's what hurts," Marionette sneered, "What if she didn't want to go with him?"

"We all must make personal sacrifices for the good of the family!" Shunei's mother insisted.

Marionette wiped her hands down her face, "This is all my fault." She then dramatically took her leave back to Shunei's room. The old woman didn't understand why the puppet girl was so upset with it and resumed drinking her tea.

Hours later in Shunei's room stood a tall mirror which Marionette stood in front of, finally seeing herself for the first time. She noticed all of the scars on her face which she assumed had been leftover from the body's previous occupant. She also noted that one of Sasori's red scorpions marked the back of her neck. She let her orange hair flop down as she pointed to the image in the mirror, "This is your fault, if you hadn't come back this wouldn't have happened."

She tapped the mirror and asserted to the image, "You have to fix things. It's your fault he took Kanshi and you have to get her back. As the body of her dead sister, you need to make sure that she'll be alright."

She tapped the mirror with her fingers again, almost causing it to shatter, "When that's done with, you need to disappear forever. You need to return to your Master and beg for forgiveness. You need to serve him obediently until your dying breath."

Marionette sat her head against the mirror, "And you need to take the Gendari."


	12. Chapter 12

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-12-**

When all was quiet in the Gorex household, the puppet girl began to make her move. She stayed close to the walls and made her way to the living room, flinging the weapon case above the mantle open and taking the two boomerang weapons that hung inside it. Sneaking past the older man who had fallen asleep on the couch, she tip toed to the front door and quietly exited the household.

Marionette made her way out of the poor quarter and brought out the map that the old hag had given her days ago. She might not know the name of the man who had taken Kanshi, but she knew that he was wealthy. All she had to do was look around the manors of Takigakure for either Kanshi or her now fiancé. Luckily the poor quarter was not far from the wealthy district.

A hike further into Takigakure brought her to an area cluttered with large manor homes bright with light. She decided to take the first house on her left and used the Gendari to scale it to the window on the second story. When she pulled herself up to the window she noticed that it was covered by a curtain. Since no one could be able to recognize her once she left, Marionette took one of the Gendari and stabbed into the window, shattering it and ripping part of the curtain off.

What she found however was a pair of astonished lovers who had just been caught in the act, "What the fuck!" the male of the pair called, racing to the window. Marionette pulled the other Gendari out of the side of the house and fell to the ground, flustered, and ran to the next house. With a bit of luck she managed to stay out of the sight of the man as he shot outside and looked around his property.

In the next house's window she climbed up to find an elderly man, possibly one of the village's elders. She decided that it would be best to not bother and moved onto the next house. The next window was that of a woman who was petting her cat she dropped down. The following house had a man admiring himself in woman's dresses in a mirror, she dropped down. She noted that the wealthy citizens of Takigakure were quite...eccentric.

On the right side of the street, second house, she finally found what she had been looking for. Kanshi was sitting at a desk in ornately decorated room writing. Marionette knocked on the window until she had Kanshi's attention and opened it for her.

"What are you doing here?" Kanshi whispered as she let her in. Marionette brushed all of the dirt that had accumulated on her off and put the Gendari away.

"I came to rescue you see," she grabbed Kanshi's shoulders, "I got you into this mess and if I don't get you out of it I will never make it to Heaven!"

Kanshi pulled the hands off of her and took a seat on the large and neatly made bed, "If I go back home Doki will just come back to get me again. Did you have a plan?" She assumed that Doki was the name of the man who had taken her.

"Well," Marionette rubbed her chin, "I was thinking maybe I could just sneak you out."

"And what if we get resistance?" Kanshi shook her head at her _rescuer's_ inexperience, "They'll kill you on the spot."

"I..." Marionette didn't know what she would do. She didn't want to kill anyone because she felt that if she did she would be denied Heaven, but if she didn't rescue Kanshi she'd be denied it anyway. She realized then that if she was to serve Sasori, she would have to be able to kill to protect her anyway, "I'll take care of any resistance we get."

"You can handle it?" the young woman was unsure of the puppet girl's abilities, "Well I hope you're ready."

"Couldn't we just go out the wind-?"

Just as Marionette spoke, a voice came from the other side of the door and the doorknob began to squeak, "Kanshi, are you in there?" The two women looked at one another frantically. When Doki opened the door a moment later however, Kanshi was back by her desk writing sitting on a thick tree trunk oddly.

"What is it Master Doki?" she asked as she set her writing utensil down.

"I thought I heard voices, I guess it was nothing," he turned to leave, but stopped when a piece of plaster fell from the ceiling. He looked up to see Marionette using the Gendari to latch herself onto the ceiling, "What the-"

Marionette dropped down on top of him, putting a foot on his mouth to shut him up, "Don't speak Doki or you die, got it?" He squirmed under her for a bit shouting for help, but luckily everything he said was muffled by Marionette's foot. She took her foot off of him and grabbed him by the neck, throwing him into the wall. In a whispered shout, she yelled, "I told you to be quiet Doki, keep it up!"

Once Doki stood up, he shouted as loud as he humanly could; "Guards, help!" And just as he finished, Marionette threw one of the Gendari into him. As he bled out onto the carpet he breathed a warning, "You won't leave this house alive, bitch."

All of the violence had mentally scarred Kanshi, who stood by the desk still, holding the paper to herself. She was completely frozen; even Marionette waving a hand in her direction motioning her to come near was met with silence. So Marionette rushed over to her, grabbing and tossing her over her shoulder, "Kanshi we can't wait around!"

The paper that Kanshi had been writing had fallen to the ground by Marionette's feet; she bent over to read it;

_"Dear Mother and Father, _

_Please forgive me for what I am about to do, I want you to know that I will always love you both very much. Remember me with warm feelings._

_Your Daughter,_

_Kanshi"_

A suicide note. Had Marionette not arrived when she did, Kanshi might have been dead. Just the idea that she had saved Kanshi filled her with a sense of accomplishment. But at the same time, it was still her fault that Kanshi had been put into such a place.

Marionette rushed back over to Doki's corpse and pulled the flung Gendari out. She heard the sound of rushing feet headed up the stairs and her way, she prepared herself. Five large men with kunai raised rushed in, Marionette used the Gendari to block their attacks, kicking at them with her feet. She was still weak, but she had managed to build up some strength to block their attacks.

Quickly jumping back, Marionette remembered the hand seals from Sasori's book; _ram-snake-tiger_, then _dog-boar-ram_. Marionette transformed her with Kanshi flung over her back into one of the guards, then made several clones of said guard. While the other guards attacked at anyone who looked like the copied guard, Marionette in disguised attacked the original guard, stabbing him with a kunai.

The other guards noticed this and assumed that Marionette was the real guard, joining in the beating. When all of the clones were defeated and the real guard was being swarmed upon by his team, Marionette took the opportunity to slip out of the room and down the side of the stairs to the first floor which was empty. Her disguise then wore out and she could hear silence from upstairs.

"Wait a minute...there were six of us here right?" Marionette took no time to race out while the guards realized that they had killed one of their own. Outside of the mansion wasn't much better, the man who she had interrupted from before was still running around the area looking for her in a loin cloth. Marionette noticed that there was a large river with a bridge by the manor and raced to it, jumping in while the guards all assembled outside looking for her.

An hour of fruitless searching later, Marionette pulled herself onto a set of rocks under the bridge with Kanshi still on her back. She laid the young girl down, "Sorry for the bumpy ride."

Kanshi was still dazed it seemed, she aimlessly held a hand up, which Marionette grabbed and squeezed comfortingly, "Talk to me Kanshi, it's over now, you're safe!"

The girl was still silent, "No one's going to hurt you Kanshi, please, talk." No reply still. Marionette grabbed Kanshi and threw her back over her shoulder, "We have one last stop then Kanshi and it will be all over."


	13. Chapter 13

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-13-**

In the middle of the night, when the wealthy district was swept with terror, Marionette managed to sneak her way back to the Gorex residence. She wasn't going to simply return Kanshi home, no, she had other plans. The puppet girl quietly opened the door and set the shocked young woman down by it to rest, she would be quick. She pulled out the Gendari again and held them out as she quietly made her way to the living room.

The two adults were both lying around on the couch and recliner. Marionette quietly stepped over to where Shunei's mother laid and held the two Gendari above her, aiming the blades down and striking. But before the Gendari were able to pierce the flesh of the older woman, someone had grabbed her arms and stopped her. She looked to her side to see a frantic Kanshi.

"Please, stop, you don't have to do this to them!" she harshly whispered as she continued to hold onto the puppet girl's arms with a death-like grip, "They don't need to die, please spare them!"

Marionette let her arms fall to her sides and Kanshi let go of her, "But they sold you away against your will. They deserve to be punished."

"Not by your hands," the young woman quickly grabbed Marionette's wrists and forced her to look at her hands, "You're hands have been stained red with enough blood tonight."

Marionette looked at her hands; they were soaked with blood like in her nightmare, the nightmare that made her run to her Master's room for comfort. She bowed her head in shame, "I killed."

Kanshi pulled her away from the two sleeping adults and to the front door, "It's going to be hard now, they'll all be looking for the two of us now." She shook her head, "I don't even know what to call you, sister?"

"No," Marionette quietly replied, still ashamed of herself, "I am not your sister. Shunei is in Heaven. I'm simply a different entity that has possessed her leftover shell."

"What will you do now?" Kanshi asked with deep concern.

Marionette ripped the headband from around her neck and with one of the Gendari, slashed a long line into it, like she had seen with Sasori's headband, "We leave the village, tonight." She grabbed Kanshi again and furiously ran away from Takigakure.

Deep into the forest she came across the creepy old man and his shack. When he saw the two, he stopped and stared in their direction. "Well if it isn't the little Akatsuki I met the other day, what brings you back to my tent?" Kanshi gawked in horror as the old hag acknowledged Marionette as a member of Akatsuki.

She sat the young woman down finally, "I want you to let her stay here for a while."

"What!" Kanshi continued to gawk as she looked from person to person.

"Please, keep her safe for me mister."

The old man began to scratch his chin in thought, "She can have my shack if she wants, I've been thinking of moving to Sunagakure anyway." This surprised the two of them.

"Just like that, you're letting me have your shack!" the young woman shouted in disbelief, "There's a catch isn't there?"

"Nope," the old man walked over to his shack then snickered, "As long as you don't try and hunt me down later!"

Kanshi was frozen once again in confusion while Marionette was eternally grateful, "Thank you so much mister!" The old man returned from the shack with a small wrapped sack which he threw over his shoulder.

"Not a problem kids." With that, he started off in the other direction. Kanshi still couldn't move, so Marionette pulled her inside of the shack. Oddly, it was quite clean and organized. There were a few paintings hanging on the walls inside that depicted the many hidden villages as well as several hanging weapons. The two continued to look around the shack, which also had a small kitchen and a lofty bed.

"What do you think of it?" Marionette asked as she turned back to Kanshi.

"I...," Kanshi grabbed her head and sat down on the bed, "So much has happened all at once. I can't even begin to..."

Marionette sat in an empty chair nearby, "Give yourself a break then, rest."

"I imagine you have no plans to stay here with me," her voice grew stern, "Akatsuki?"

"I must return to my Master and ask for his forgiveness, but I will visit you as often as I am allowed," she got back up, "I will also have to ask him more about Akatsuki."

As she walked to the door of the shack, Kanshi grabbed her arm, "Before you go, I must ask one more thing." The puppet girl turned back to her, "If you aren't Shunei, what do you call yourself?"

"My Master calls me Marionette," she quietly replied, then gave a quick smile and left.

In the dead of night, Marionette walked through the towering forest outside of Takigakure. She wanted desperately to feel the bed that Sasori had given her again and to hear him speak to her. More so, she wanted to be held by him, to cry by him. For the short existence she had, the pain of being separated from him for so long, twice, sent her heart into knots.

She looked around the forest, trying to remember the exact path she took when she ran away. The farther that she walked, the more her heart began to weaken in anticipation of returning to her Master. However, she did not know how he would take her return. For all she knew, he could simply throw her back out or even kill her. But even so, she wanted to die knowing that she tried to serve him.

Night turned into day and the forest was alive with colors as Marionette neared the familiar base. Her pace slowed until it was that of small steps. She walked through the flowers that she had remembered picking when she was last there and the crown Sasori had helped her make.

When she finally reached the entrance and pushed it open, the base was void of any sound. She called out anxiously, "Ma...Master?" Without a response, she walked down to where her and Sasori's rooms were. Only her own footsteps could be heard as she continued her slow pace down.

Marionette quietly opened the door to Sasori's room. She did not see him at first, but then looked to his bed where she finally saw the puppet master peacefully sleeping. She tip toed her way over to his workbench where the crown sat, now out of the sieve and perfectly preserved.

Returning to where Sasori was sleeping, she carefully placed the crown of flowers on his head and laid on the floor by his bed. She would wait for him to awaken.


	14. Chapter 14

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-14-**

Loyal Marionette stayed by Sasori's bedside until she fell asleep. She was awakened by the sound of a hammer clashing with metal. Sasori was up working at his workbench and her false forearm was missing, "You're finally awake."

Almost instantaneously, Marionette got down on her knees and bowed to Sasori, "Master, please forgive me for leaving you! I ran off like a stubborn child only to realize that where I need to be was by your side, serving you to my last breath."

He did not turn around, but answered her, "It's fine. I expected it to happen eventually."

"That does not give me an excuse to act as rash as I did," she continued to bow to him.

Sasori then turned around, "How did the family reunion go? I noticed you had the Gendari in your possession. And your arm was chipped and filled with water." Marionette pulled her upper half back up and looked to Sasori's workbench where her arm sat in pieces.

"They are not my family, Master," then lowering back down again, "You are my only family, Master."

"I assume that means it went sour," he turned back to his workbench and continued to dry off the disassembled pieces of her arm.

"The world outside of this base is a terrible place, Master. The people are cruel to one another, different than how you treat me," Marionette then remembered the rose crown and tilted her head upwards to see it was missing from Sasori's head.

"It was your first time leaving the base since you awoke, you were unprepared socially." Marionette felt the crown on her own head, he must have placed it there while she was asleep, "I also noticed the slash through your headband. Was it an attempt to mimic the style of my own or have you disassociated yourself from Takigakure for good?"

She remained in the spot by his bed, but leaned back so she was looking up at him, "I am only loyal to you, Master."

Sasori finished drying the last pieces of her arm and began to reassemble it, "Well now that you're back I believe it is time I explained some of the enhancements I made to your body."

"I noticed your red scorpion mark, Master." He quickly turned and tossed the reassembled arm to Marionette.

"Yes, I like to leave a personal touch on my work," he turned himself around completely so he was facing Marionette, "First, your arm. I used a similar design from my Scorpion for it. Although you managed to dampen the pipe, it can shoot intense fire blasts. Your eyes, which I noticed seemed a bit looser since you've left, can be crushed to release a cloud of poison I developed that causes paralyzation upon inhalation by a target."

"Do they grow back? I'd hate to be blind...," she thought aloud.

"Yes, they do with a specific jutsu I have not yet taught you," he slid off of his seat and stepped towards her, "I installed a removable poison barbed spike into your back that can be thrown at enemies. And the crown of roses," he carefully removed it from her head, "I attached a string of poison barbed senbon through the wire. They won't stab you if you wear it, but you can pull them out to use."

"Master," Marionette felt around her back for the opening, "I feel like a killing machine the more you mention it." Her nail then hit a groove in her back which opened as Sasori told her.

"I wanted to make a few more modifications, but you were revived sooner than I expected," he handed back the crown, "So that's it."

"Master, now that I'm back you can make those modifications," the thought of being opened apart on the operating table felt dirty the more she thought about it, "If you want to."

"I thought about it," He tapped his chin in thought, "Maybe I will."

Marionette hastily stood up and continued to bow to him, "On your word, Master, I will serve."

"Since you've returned you've become much more subservient and docile," he noted aloud.

"Master, I've learned my place," she remember that she had left her back open.

Sasori laid a hand on her back and closed it before she could, "These formalities are beginning to feel cliché, address me by my name."

"Yes, Master."

"No," he waged a finger at her, "Yes, Sasori."

She looked up at him, "But Master, it is not polite to address you that way."

"Go to the operating bench," he commanded, pointing to his door.

"Uh...yes Ma-Sasori, yes Sasori," she replied as she obediently raced out.

Marionette felt safe and secure back in her room even though she was lying stark naked on the operating table again. Sasori pulled up the stool to the operating table and set his tools down by her. "Master-" she began, but was cut off.

"Sasori," he corrected her.

"Sasori-no Master, I don't feel comfortable calling you that," she shook her head from side to side.

"Fine, address me by what you will," he waved his hand and picked up his knife.

"Anyway-Master, what alterations were you planning for me?" she asked as Sasori expertly cut an opening in her flesh.

"I thought about using a few leftover enhancements from Scorpion, but I didn't know if your body would be able to function again if went through with it," he cut open an edge and opened up her lower chest which was quite void.

"What made you change your mind about them now?"

"Well, through observations and," a low smirk drew upon his face, "Your insistence." Sasori turned to his supply cabinet and pulled out several mechanical pieces and a set of blueprints.

"I didn't mean you had to," she explained while Sasori looked over his blueprints, "It's just, well if my body belongs to you, as you've already clearly marked, then I don't have the authority to refuse your will upon it."

"As I said, you're much more subservient," he mumbled as he jotted a few notes on his blueprints. He then grabbed one of the mechanical pieces he had removed from his cabinet, "I've also come up with a few enhancements to compliment the Gendari, it's good you kept them." Marionette flattened herself back on the operating table and closed her eyes while Sasori got to work.

Hours passed while Sasori worked. Deidara even stopped by again and walked in on the operating, noting that Marionette looked something like a "_fucked up amputee_" during it. Once night hit the puppet master finally dropped his tools and looked down at his creation with a wide grin.

"Marionette, it is done," he shook her shoulder. The puppet girl awoke and sat up on the operating table, feeling a large pain in her gut, then looking down to see that she also no longer had a gut.

She held up her arms to examine them and noticed that her flesh hand was virtually unchanged while her false arm had a thin tube of blood running down the side of it, "What did you change, Master?" She swung her legs to the side of the operating table and noticed they had been replaced as well.

"Numerous adjustments, I'll explain them to you tomorrow," he yawned as he slid off of his stool and onto his feet, "Go to bed now." With that he left, closing the door behind him.

Marionette jumped down from the operating table and once her feet hit the surface of the floor, she was jolted back up by a burst of air below them. Falling to her knees, she pulled her feet over to examine the palms of them. They had a similar opening design as her false hand did. She assumed that the air burst was another of Sasori's additions. Marionette carefully got to her feet, trying to avoid being pushed up again and re-dressed herself.

Falling into bed again, she resumed sleeping but was scared awake by another nightmare. This time, it involved Sasori's disassembled puppet body eerily calling to her; "You've failed to protect me over and over" She tried to put him back together again but nothing would fit together. Upon awakening from it, she raced to Sasori's room with her blanket wrapped around her to find him back in his bed, peacefully sleeping. She quietly sat back by the side of his bed and waited to fall asleep again.


	15. Chapter 15

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

* * *

**-15-**

Like the morning before, Sasori awoke to see Marionette sleeping by his bedside. He dodged her sleeping body as he got out of bed, wondering if this would be a daily routine. He took a big yawn and returned to his workbench again. But as he picked up his hammer, he noticed that he was still covered in blood from the previous day's operation and decided he would take a bath.

When Marionette awoke, Sasori was gone from his room. She panicked, wondering where he could be until she ran down the base's hall and once again, into Deidara.

"Jeez puppet girl, how many times are you going to ram me while I'm trying to walk!" he shouted as he stood up and brushed the dirt off of himself, "What's the matter now, hmm?"

"Mister Deidara," she grabbed his shoulders tightly and shook him frantically, "I can't find Master!"

Deidara forced her arms off of him, "Relax, I saw him walk to the bath room, he's probably just taking a bath."

"Oh...," Marionette was embarrassed with how she handled that, "I'm sorry Mister Deidara..."

"That's a change," he noted, beginning to walk away, but was stopped again by the puppet girl grabbing him, "What now, hmm?"

"Mister Deidara could you um...help me?" she twiddled her digits together sheepishly.

"With what, hmm?" he turned to her and replied dryly.

"Since you're a human I want to know if you could," she paused, "Teach me how to show affection."

Deidara was once again nonplussed, "You want to have some kind of crazy puppet sex with Sasori, hmm?"

She lowered her head into her hand and sighed, "No, I just want to...show him affection. But I don't know how."

Deidara looked to the side for a moment and thought, then an idea came to him, "Marionette, come to my room later, I'll show you how to show your little puppet lover all the love in the world!" Deidara then turned around and walked back to his room, Marionette watched him in confusion.

When Sasori finished his bath, Marionette was sitting by his bedside as he had left her, but awake. "Are you ready to test your new enhancements, Marionette?"

Marionette turned to her Master as he approached, "Of course!" Sasori cut past her and to one of his hanging puppets, pulling it down. "Are you going to train me with that?"

"Of course, what did you expect?" Blue strings of chakra shot from his fingers and onto the puppet he pulled down. With a few flicks of his fingers, the puppet stood up and walked out of the room with him following behind.

"You, Master," Marionette called as she stood and followed the two down the hallway.

"I never use myself against anyone; I have my puppets for that." He pushed open the entrance to the base and stood to the side, positioning his puppet in the middle. Marionette stood across from it. "I hope you brought the Gendari with you."

Marionette flung the two boomerang weapons out of their holders on her thighs and caught one with each hand. The Gendari in her flesh hand clamped down into her vein to draw blood while the false arm's Gendari stuck the thin tube of blood, "So that's what that's for!"

"Yes, now I want you to try dodging an attack from my puppet by jumping upwards," Sasori called from the other side. Marionette held both Gendari out to block and readied her legs to spring up, "Ready?" She nodded and his puppet swung at her. The puppet girl taped the palms of her feet onto the ground and was propelled up by a burst of air pressure from the pipes as she had accidentally done the night before.

"Neat, Master," she called back as she sprung up into the air, dodging his puppet's blows.

"Now next time you jump up, tap the back of your ankles with the front side of your feet then try to come over to me," Marionette shot him a look of confusion, "You'll see what I mean when you try it."

"As you say, Master," Marionette twisted her body to dodge another blow then jumped again, quickly tapping the back of her ankles. Out of each ankle shot a metal pole with a propeller, which helped her glide the short distance to Sasori. She dropped down to the ground by him, "You think of everything don't you, Master?"

"Of course!" he turned his puppet around, "Next I want you to try using the chain in your lower abdomen. There are two of them in there, one you can attach to the Gendari to catch opponents in and another hooked onto the barbed spike in your back." As Sasori explained this, Marionette pulled the loose chain out of her abdomen and hooked each side onto one of the Gendari, "Try it now."

Sasori jumped away and sent his puppet racing towards Marionette. She flung the Gendari at both sides of the puppet and watched as it wrapped around it, then impaled it with its blades. Marionette felt excited the more tricks she tried. "Now try the hand cannon," the puppet master called. The puppet girl held her palm up to the dummy puppet and shot a burst of fire at it. She let her arm drop as well as her guard and the dummy puppet rammed into her, sending her flying back into the wall. Her false arm also dropped to the ground from the hit.

"Don't even bother picking it back up now," Sasori commanded from the side, "There's a switch on the side of your arm, flip it back then attack." Sasori sent his dummy puppet back towards her again for a second attack. This time she felt around her arm for a switch, when she flipped it a knife shot out from the end of her arm, "Another surprise from my Scorpion."

"I'll say," Marionette joked back, and then raced towards the dummy puppet with the hidden knife.

Sasori released his strings from it, catching Marionette off-guard, "And we're done for today."

"We're done already? What?" she shouted to her Master.

Sasori strolled over to the dummy puppet, "Yes, that's all for today. We're already a week behind with your lessons, as you recall."

"I almost forgot about that," she bowed to Sasori, "Thank you for letting me try your enhancements out Master, it was fun."

He picked up his partially broken puppet, untangling the chain and Gendari and carrying it, "Mhm, inside."

For several hours Sasori explained to Marionette how jutsu worked and the process behind using them. He found it interesting that she had already gotten practice with performing jutsu from her little tirade in Takigakure. He was able to teach her the remaining E-rank that she didn't already know and several D-rank jutsu. The lesson ended with a promise that the following day he would teach her the basics of the puppet technique. In the meantime, she decided to head over to Deidara's room to follow up on their short talk that morning.

"Mister Deidara?" Marionette called as she knocked on the blonde artist's door. No response. "Mister Deidara?" she called as she knocked again.

A voice finally answered her, "Gimme a moment, hmm." Then Deidara opened the door, waving her inside, "Come right in." Right as she stepped in, she noticed a large sheet flung over a tall piece of some kind of furniture in the middle of his room. The puppet girl sat on the side of Deidara's bed, facing the disguised item. Deidara closed his door tightly, making sure to lock it then stood beside his surprise, "And here it is!" He pulled the sheet off revealing a life-sized statue of Sasori.

"It's kind of creepy, you aren't going to set that off and try to kill me are you?" was her first comment.

"No," he thought for a moment, "Well I'll set it off later, but you said you wanted to know how to show affection to Sasori, hmm. Well here's a copy of him to learn on."

Marionette was still skeptical about this whole _statue of Sasori _business, "And how will I do that? There's probably some catch."

"If need you a demonstration then come here, hmm! I don't want to have wasted my time on this in vain!" he pulled her to her feet and stood her in front of the statue. "First you're going to hug him," he grabbed Marionette's arms and wrapped them around the statue of Sasori. Marionette continued to stare at Deidara confoundedly. "You wanted help and I'm helping you, hmm. So work with me here."

"Ok, ok," she sighed and gave it her all; giving the statue a realistic hug, "Why isn't Master smiling?"

"That's unrealistic, Sasori never smiles, hmm."

Marionette sat her head on the statue's shoulder, "That's not true; I've seen him smile a few times."

"Whatever," Deidara sighed and shook his head, "Now kiss it, hmm."

"Kiss it?" she asked as she untangled herself from the statue and stepped back.

"Yes, kissing," he scrunched his lips together to make a kissy face. He then pointed to the statue's lips, "Your lips touch his lips, hmm!" Marionette then awkwardly leaned into the statue and touched her lips with the statue's. Deidara shook his head and shouted; "No, put feeling in it!" Marionette then dipped into the statue again. "No, grab his face and close your eyes! Do it again, hmm!" This time Marionette grabbed the statue's face and closed her eyes and dipped in, missing it.

Deidara screamed in frustration, "JUST KISS THE DAMN THING SO I CAN GO TO BED, HMM!" Right as Marionette was about to dip in again, there was a knock on Deidara's door. In a panic, he threw the sheet over the statue with Marionette still holding it.

Then came another knock and Sasori called from the other side of the door, "Deidara quit shouting, it's giving me a headache!"

Deidara opened the door a crack so he could fit part of his face out of it to talk, "I'm busy working, you can close your door if you want to sleep."

"I shouldn't have to, you should know to keep your voice down in the middle of the night," Sasori shot back. The two argued back and forth while Marionette climbed out of the sheet and snuck over to Deidara's closet. "What was that?" Sasori questioned when he heard the closet door.

"Oh it's nothing, probably just a mouse," the blonde reassured the puppet master.

"Whatever you say," Sasori sighed as he walked away, "Oh and tell Marionette to get some sleep."

Upon hearing that, Marionette fell out of the closet and onto the floor, glaring up at Deidara. The blonde quickly closed and locked the door behind him, "Fuck, how long was he listening for!"

"I don't know Mister Deidara, but I swear if Master thinks I've been consorting with you, you're dead," the puppet girl threatened from the floor.

"You should've just listened to me the first time and done what I told you to!" he harshly whispered to her.

"Well you shouldn't have been so loud!" she whispered back, getting to her feet, "I'm going back to my room!" As Marionette tip-toed down the hallway, Deidara opened the door again and kicked the statue of Sasori, now on wheels, behind her. When she turned around to see what the noise was, it slammed into her and the two flew down the rest of the hallway.

"DAMN YOU BLONDE!"


	16. Chapter 16

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-16-**

When the statue and Marionette collided with the closed door to her room the statue not only broke into pieces, but it all made a large hole in the door. Marionette was also covered with pieces of clay. On the other side of the hall, the blonde was hysterical, causing Sasori to awaken and throw open his door in annoyance yet again. Only to see Marionette lying through the door to her room with scattered pieces of a statue that oddly resembled him. Suffice to say, it did not end well.

Marionette and Deidara were lined up on the wall across from Sasori's door while he paced back and forth shaking his head in frustration, trying to make sense of the scene. He picked up the head of the statue and raised it by Deidara, "Why is there a destroyed clay life-sized statue of me?" Then he pointed a finger at the door, "Marionette, why were you stuck half-way through your own door with said clay statue of me in pieces around you?"

"Master," she bowed then pointed an accusing finger at Deidara, "It is all his fault."

"Why you, hmm!" Deidara fumed, and then pointed an accusing finger back, "She asked for it!"

Sasori closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with his free hand, "You both do realize that I'm going to have to negotiate with Kakuzu to buy a new door? And you, Deidara, know how much Kakuzu doesn't like having to waste money on idiotic accidents like this."

He tossed the statue's head to Deidara, "I want it gone, tonight." He then pointed to his own room, "Marionette, I'll deal with you later."

"Yes Master," she sighed as she walked to Sasori's room, closing the door behind her. Inside she picked up her folded blanket by Sasori's bedside and laid down in her usual spot, waiting for her Master to come in and reprimand her then question the purpose of the statue of him.

Outside of his room, she could hear what sounded like Deidara scrambling around to collect the pieces of the destroyed statue. Then what she assumed was Sasori unscrewing the destroyed door and placing the pieces to the side. She waited and waited until she fell asleep from waiting. An hour later, she was awoken by Sasori's foot nudging her back.

Marionette shuffled around to see Sasori standing over her with his arms crossed and the same annoyed look on his face. She braced herself for what was to come next.

"Why were you in Deidara's room this late at night?" he began.

"What could you be talking about Master?" she replied innocently.

"Don't play stupid, I followed you there."

Marionette began to squirm around then sat up, "Oh you did...eh."

"Yes, I did. It wasn't hard to guess that you were awake, or you would've been curled by my bed like usual."

"Well um...," Marionette began to think up excuses then gave in, "What would you like me to say Master?"

He nudged her again, "The truth."

"Well Master, I think that the statue Mister Deidara made of you was imperfect. It wasn't smiling and it was probably an inch too short."

"We can critique Deidara's poor attempts at _art_ later," he sighed, "Why did he make a statue of me?"

"I wondered the same thing when I saw it," she recalled, "It was quite disturbing- the fact that he made a statue I mean."

She could tell that Sasori's patience was wearing, not that he even had any, "What was the _purpose_ behind the statue of _me_?"

"Target practice?" she tried. She got onto her feet and stood up, a few inches away from him.

"Target. Practice?" he growled. Marionette stood, trying to think of a way to avoid having to give him a long explanation for the statue's real purpose. Then, with what understanding of affection she recalled, grabbed her Master and gave him a long kiss. Sasori grabbed her shoulders and held her at an arm's length. If he had been completely confused before, then he had just hit the Twilight Zone now.

"Oh Master! I'm sorry for destroying my door and letting Deidara sculpt a creepy statue of you!" she cried. All the while, Sasori's face was completely blank. So she continued, "I've only longed to serve you. Please don't hang me loose or destroy me, I only mean to do good by you." Still nothing.

"Please love me Master!" she shouted. Without changing his expression or even moving any part of his eyes or face, Sasori sent chakra strings out to Marionette's limbs. He made her lay back down by the side of his bed then released them. He climbed over her to lay in his own bed without either saying a single word. That's how the remainder of the night went-silent.

The next morning was quite similar. Sasori rose up early and began fixing his puppet in silence and Marionette walked out of his room to take a bath in silence. He even had the same blank expression plastered on his face while he worked. When Marionette finished her bath she noticed Deidara talking with someone she didn't recognize, a giant man with a face wrap and an Akatsuki cloak.

"I thought Sasori told you that we were going to have a new one paid to be built, hmm?" Deidara questioned the man.

The tall man argued back; "I'm not wasting my money hiring someone to fix Sasori's supply closet door! I'd rather fix it myself!"

Marionette walked up to the two as they continued to argue and asked; "Mister Deidara, Master's been acting strange since I used that_ technique_ on him." The tall man left grumbling and headed to Marionette's room, leaving her and Deidara to talk.

"What technique are you talking about, hmm?"

"I kissed him to stop him from questioning me," as she finished, Deidara's jaw dropped.

"You mean you just kissed him out of nowhere, hmm?" he questioned and she nodded, "Jeez Marionette, you're such a moron."

"He hasn't spoken since I kissed him. And he's had this odd expression on his face too," she recalled, "I might've also kind of professed my love too..."

"Oh my lord," his face fell into his hands, "What compelled you to even consider doing that, hmm?"

"Well I thought if I showed him I loved him, he wouldn't be so mad at me," she glanced back at Sasori's door, "Now I think he's lost touch with reality." Behind them, the tall man began to work on repairing the destroyed door, "Who is that guy anyway?"

"Oh that's Kakuzu; treasurer of Akatsuki," he sneered "He's just some old miser."

"What should I do about Master, Mister Deidara?"

"I'd just leave him to his work," he gave a small laugh, "But then again, I wouldn't have been as stupid as you either."

Marionette sighed and walked outside where it was nice and sunny out. She sat by the rose bush and watched the clouds for a while. It was then that she decided that she would make a rose crown for Sasori. She picked several roses and raced inside to her room, propelling herself over Kakuzu who was working on the floor outside of her room. The room's supply cabinets were stocked with enough wire to weave it together. She decided that she would surprise him with it and apologize for her rashness that night.


	17. Chapter 17

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

* * *

**-17-**

The entire day consisted of Kakuzu grumbling under his breath while trying to fix the door for Marionette, Marionette working on perfecting a rose crown for Sasori, Sasori absentmindedly fixing his dummy puppet, and Deidara sleeping, soundly. If the base's three other occupants weren't all working, they most likely would have yelled at Deidara for taking the whole situation so lightly. Although once Kakuzu finished the door, he went to Deidara for payment.

Once night hit Kakuzu had left, counting his newly acquired currency and Sasori had gone to bed extremely early. When she was sure he was sleeping, Marionette walked into his room and set the rose crown upon Sasori's head. She dropped onto her knees at his bedside with her arms slung around the supposedly sleeping man.

"Please accept my apology Master. I know this has been twice in one week, but I mean it; I'm truly sorry," she sobbed by his bedside, "Kakuzu fixed the door if you'd rather I left."

"I'm not mad," he spoke softly, the first thing he'd said to anyone all day.

She rested her chin on his shoulder, "Then what were you?"

"Not expecting that," he admitted.

"Do you want me to leave now?" she asked facing the wall as he did.

"No, stay," he shuffled over onto his back, turning his head to face her, "You do realize we're back another day with your lessons?"

She repositioned her head on his shoulder, "You promised you'd teach me the puppet technique."

To this, he held his hands out, "It's not so hard, first you concentrate your chakra into your fingertips." Blue charka threads shot out of his finger tips and onto Marionette.

"Latch your chakra strings out onto your intended target, and move your fingers to guide their movements," he shifted his fingers around, moving Marionette's arms off of him and head up, "When you get better at it, you'll be able to control greater amounts of puppets like I can." Then let his chakra strings disperse.

Marionette threw her arms back around him and set her head on an empty spot by his arm, "If we're both puppets, why do we care about missing lessons? Don't we have forever anyway?"

"I am part of an organization called Akatsuki, they tend to send me on dangerous missions, missions I can't bring you on for security reasons," he began to explain, "And sometimes those missions have very high stakes."

"What do you mean security reasons? Didn't you build me to be a weapon anyway?" she let her head fall to its side to face him.

"I did, but because you're actually considered alive and not a part of Akatsuki," he tried to think of an easy way to put it, "It would be against orders to bring you along."

"I couldn't just join Akatsuki?"

"One does not simply join Akatsuki," he rolled over onto his other side to face her, "Only ten members are allowed to be a part of Akatsuki at once, although each member can have subordinates. Most of the time though, those subordinates are used as blood sacrifices."

"I take it I won't be joining Akatsuki?"

"No, you said you only wanted to serve me. So serve only me," he rolled back around to his other side to face the wall, "Now go to bed."

"But Master, you didn't notice the rose crown?"

Sasori felt around his head with his free hand and pulled it down to look at, "Well what have we here? No senbons but it's otherwise a matching crown."

"Do you like it, Master?" Marionette quickly asked while leaning in.

"That's King Sasori to you," he joked as he sat it back on his head, "I like it."

"Yes, King Sasori," she moved back down to his bedside, "Your royal servant will sleep right here and guard you."

"Goodnight royal servant."

"Goodnight King Sasori."

The following day could be described as quite peaceful, even Deidara was left wondering what Marionette had done to raise the spirits of the puppet master when he saw her walking in the halls that afternoon, "Don't tell me you two had crazy puppet sex or something now, hmm."

"Why do you seem to assume that?" Marionette's cheeks puffed up, "It's like you're waiting for it to happen so you can sit and spy on it."

Deidara had been caught in an awkward position now, "What, hmm? Like I'd want to see that!"

"You bring it up so often," her thumb and index finger wrapped around her chin in an inquisitive expression, "I will have to remind Master to securely lock his door at night now."

Deidara walked away from her and back to his room, "Whatever, I don't care about you weird puppet people, hmm!" Marionette ignored his comment and resumed her walk to the bath room.

As she nestled by the wall of the bath, she decided to practice the puppet technique Sasori had taught her using her own false hand. Ripping it off and tossing it onto the floor by the bath, she concentrated all of her chakra into her fingers. Small blue chakra shot from her finger tips, barely missing the arm. She tried it again, accidentally shooting them into the water instead. A third time; she managed to catch one string onto the arm.

Marionette focused on the one finger that did catch the arm then re-shot with the other fingers, finally catching the forearm with the remaining four strings. She moved her digits around and the forearm began to swing around spastically. Folding her middle finger in, the forearm flung right into her, and then dropped onto the water where it began to float.

She looked at the stump of an arm where the hidden knife was and thought aloud, "I wonder if Master knows a way to have this stump shoot out chakra strings to pull the forearm back."

Right when she had decided that she had finished her bath Sasori happened to walk in, catching her off-guard, "Oh Master, are you here for a bath too?"

"Actually no, I wanted to have today's lesson right here," he explained, siting by the side of the bath.

She swam over to the side where he was, "What kind of lesson would involve a bath?"

Sasori took a step onto the water and stood, looking down at Marionette who was amazed, "I'm going to teach you how to better control your chakra with the Water Surface Walking Technique." Marionette climbed over the edge of the bath and quickly dried herself off, then redressed.

"You just...step on it?" she asked as she held one of her feet over the water.

"By sending a constant stream of chakra to your feet," he motioned for her to join him, "Try it." Marionette began to concentrate her chakra to the bottom of her foot that was hovering over the water. When she finally lowered it onto the water it worked for a moment, then sank. She tried it again with a little more success.

Her foot sank again, "I can't..."

"No you can, but it takes practice," he reminded her as he walked back to the side of the bath, "I want you to continue to practice this for the rest of today, it will help you in the long run." He left Marionette alone to practice.

So for the rest of the day, she stayed in the bath room trying to master the Water Surface Walking Technique.


	18. Chapter 18

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

_Hey so I wanted to thank everyone again for reading and such, as well as all the reviews, story alerts, and story favorites. It feels really greet to have so much positive feedback from everyone!_

* * *

**-18-**

By the end of the day, Marionette was able to stay above the water for almost a minute. It was a nice improvement from what little she was able to do earlier that day. However, practicing the technique the entire day had drained her, so she decided to head to bed. When she made her way to Sasori's room that night her blanket was gone from its spot by Sasori's bedside and was instead laid on his bed.

"Don't worry I'm not kicking you out. I just needed to sweep the floor, it was very dusty," Sasori called to her.

"Oh, thank you Master," the puppet girl walked to his beside and laid down, pulling her blanket down and draping it over her.

As she began to get comfortable Sasori spoke to her, "You _could_ sleep up here if you wanted to."

She softly replied from his bedside, "Is that a command or are you just putting the thought in my head?"

"It _could_ be a command from King Sasori."

"_Can_ it be a command from King Sasori?"

She heard Sasori shift in his bed, "I, King Sasori, do command my royal servant to lie upon this bed."

Marionette climbed up beside him, "Then I, your royal servant, will lie upon this bed." Making herself comfortable then draped her blanket over the two of them.

"Is my royal servant comfortable?" he asked.

"What really matters is if my King, Sasori, is comfortable," she replied back.

"Well I am indeed quite comfortable," he admitted.

Thus Marionette began to sleep peacefully, lying by her Master. Perhaps brought on by the comfort of being next to her master, Marionette did not suffer from her usual nightmares nor was awakened at any point that night. It was the most peaceful and refreshing sleep she had gotten since her second birth had awakened on the operating table. In the morning when Sasori would have been preparing the lesson for the day, Marionette instead proposed an idea.

"What if I took you to meet Kanshi?" she asked, rocking back and forth on the side of his bed.

Sasori was once again fixing one of his puppets at his workbench, "I already met Kanshi actually, when I went to Takigakure on that errand."

"Well," she offered, "You never got to see her new abode."

He began to lightly hammer down on one of the puppet's hinges, "She moved elsewhere?"

"I relocated her actually," Marionette began to boast, "After I killed her and my body's previous occupant's fiancé. Escaping capture by his guards and hiding out under the big bridge in town."

"Sounds like quite a little adventure you had," he remarked.

"I promised Kanshi that I would visit her every once and a while," she explained, "And I would be _oh so overjoyed_ if _King Sasori_ were to make the short journey there and back with me." She made sure to sugar up the proposal by using his pillow nickname.

"Well," he pretended to consider, "We would be missing another day's worth of lessons. But if you promise that this is a worthwhile journey for King Sasori to go on, I'm sure he would be most pleased to escort you."

"Oh but his royal servant would be doing all of the escorting, she would be offended if his highness had to walk the long journey there." Out of nowhere, Marionette grabbed him from behind and threw him over her shoulder, "Off we go your highness!"

As Marionette raced down the hallway with Sasori, where Deidara happened to be roaming the hall and barely missed being rammed by her again, "What was that about, hmm?"

"I'll be back in a few hours, watch the base!" Sasori called as the puppet girl ran off into the forest with him.

Deidara sarcastically called back; "Ok, enjoy your exhibitionistic, crazy puppet sex, hmm!"

Off into the forest the duo went, racing around trees and avoiding aboveground roots. Sasori seemed to enjoy the hanging ride as his body bobbed around. A few minutes in of straight running, Marionette decided that to use the air pumps and propellers that the puppet master had added to her to make the voyage a little bit faster. She beat the bottoms of her feet into the ground and tapped her ankles to be met with a blast of air that sent her flying through the forest in lightning speed.

"It looks like those enhancements really came in use eh King Sasori?" she called to him while gliding through the trees.

"I might have to think about adding these to the Scorpion, they get some pretty nice air," he noted.

After a few hours of continuous running and flying through the forest later, the duo made it to Kanshi's shack, "Isn't this the shack that Roishi owned?"

Marionette lightly dropped to the ground, "If that's what the old guy's name was. He let Kanshi have it without any sort of payment in return; it was really nice of him." She lowered herself down and allowed Sasori to slide off of her and to his feet. "Jeez that really took all of my energy out of me," she yawned.

"Well we did arrive here hours faster than it would usually take by foot," Sasori noted, looking up at the position of the sun.

"I think I'll just rest it up inside," she joked as she walked over to the shack, knocking, "Hey Kanshi, you there? It's me Marionette!" A few seconds later the door swung open and Kanshi motioned for her guests to come inside. It seemed the young woman had moved some furniture around since she was last there and was wearing what appeared to be standard Takigakure shinobi garb, "I didn't know you were a ninja?"

"Oh," Kanshi looked her clothing over, "I graduated from the academy but I didn't really continue my studies. But since I live alone now, I decided that I might as well learn how to protect myself. It's kind of enjoyable." The two puppets took seats by a wooden table as Kanshi tottered over to her small kitchenette, "Would either of you like something to eat, drink?"

"Not really," Marionette answered, "I can't really digest."

"Neither can I," Sasori added.

Kanshi got herself a cup of tea, as her step-mother always had, and sat in one of the empty chairs at the table with them. She motioned towards Sasori, "So who are you anyway, your voice sounds familiar…"

That made him chuckle a bit, "Oh I'm just a private investigator."

"I remember you!" Kanshi mused, "So you not only managed to find my dead sister, but you happened to come visit me with her. What a small world."

"He's my Master," Marionette explained.

Kanshi then noticed his cloak, "Oh you're Akatsuki too."

"Small world?" the puppet girl joked, "So how've you been out here Kanshi?"

"I'll admit, it's a bit lonesome living out here," the young girl recalled aloud, "Maybe I might do some traveling eventually." The young girl thought back to what the old man had said, "Maybe Suna one day?"

The two women sat and talked for several hours, although Marionette was glad that she had visited Kanshi with her Master. Having him there to listen to the two reminisce of how she broke into the manor in Takigakure and almost murdered Kanshi's parents made her self-esteem go up a bit. Even though he wasn't that talkative, he would give a smile every so often that filled the puppet girl's heart up. Kanshi also seemed interested in one day training with Marionette after she was a bit more established in her new residence. As the two puppets left Kanshi handed Marionette two rings.

"What's this?" she asked as she examined it.

"Shunei and Doki's engagement rings," the young woman explained, "I figured you could keep them as mementos if you wanted." She glanced over to Sasori who was waiting for Marionette, "Or you could put them to use one day."

The puppet girl slipped them into the holders where her Gendari were kept for the time being, "Thank you Kanshi, I'll be sure to stop by again sometime!" With walked back over to where her Master was waiting and waved goodbye to Kanshi one last time. Then she slung Sasori over her shoulder again and shot up into the air, flying away.


	19. Chapter 19

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-19-**

Several weeks passed, in which Marionette continued practicing the puppet technique using Sasori's dummy puppet in the daytime. And at night she'd lay beside King Sasori as his royal servant to guard him from the insuring bed bugs or nightmares. The puppet master's once cold heart continued to melt and he began to feel much more alive, for a puppet, and happy. The puppet girl in turn, continued to mentally mature into the twenty seven year old that her body truly was.

Deidara played the unwilling witness to this affair, supplying his usual commentary on how much he despised having to watch it; a duo of mechanical killers prancing around the base at all hours, giving him massive headaches every morning. On one such instance, the trio ended up destroying the door to Sasori's supply closet or Marionette's old room, again. Which meant the group was forced to shell out more money to Kakuzu to fix the door-again.

"I swear if this happens one more time," the tall man grumbled as he got to work fixing the door for the second time.

"Oh don't worry Mister Kakuzu," she reassured him, "It won't! Deidara just forgot that he left a bit of clay outside the door while he was setting it off."

Kakuzu turned to the puppet girl to give a snarky reply but instead mentioned, "I recall seeing your name added to the wanted list at the Bounty Office."

She grimaced, "You aren't going to try bringing me in are you?"

He returned his attention to the door, "It's not worth it. I'm being paid _more_ to fix this than what your bounty is worth." Of course that made her wonder, how much were they paying him for the door anyway?

Marionette quietly opened the door to Sasori's room a pinch and heard Deidara say; "So the jinchuriki we're going after, it's in Suna, hmm?"

"Yes," she heard Sasori answer.

"You were from Sunagakure, hmm?" he asked, pointing to the headband that sat on Sasori's workbench with a line crossed through it, "Did you know the jinchuriki, hmm?"

"I didn't know him before I defected, no," the puppet master admitted as he worked, "He's the fifth Kazekage; I've always wanted to add another one to my collection."

The blonde laughed sarcastically, "Just what I need to see, you making another creepy puppet!" When Marionette opened the door further, the two immediately moved onto another subject; "I don't know how she did it, but if the Sasori from a month ago saw you now, he wouldn't believe it."

Sasori joined in with him while the puppet girl took a seat on his bed, "You're right, I probably wouldn't have believed it. But I probably wouldn't have believed that you'd make a clay life-sized sculpture of me either."

"About that," the blonde recalled, "It sure gave one hell of an explosion when I set it off."

"Just what I've always wanted," the puppet master replied sarcastically, "To be a part of your pathetic art."

Deidara leaned back into the door frame, "Well at least that's one thing that hasn't changed." He looked over to Marionette who picked up Sasori's new rose crown and started decorating it with senbon. "I'm surprised you forgot to preserve the last one," he joked.

"I think this one's better than the first," the puppet girl remarked as she stuck in senbon after senbon, "So how much is Mister Kakuzu being paid for the door anyway? He tells me it's more than my own bounty."

"Like you have a bounty, hmm!" Deidara laughed.

"I do," she shot back, "I'm a defected Takigakure shinobi now."

"Why don't you and Kakuzu go reminisce then, hmm!" he obviously doubted her.

"I was from a very different generation of Takigakure shinobi than that child," Kakuzu called from outside of the room, "That village continues to grow weaker."

"I suppose so," Marionette agreed, "Or else my body's previous occupant wouldn't have died so young." She could hear the older ninja laugh to himself outside the door.

"Oh I almost forgot," the blonde recalled dryly, "You still swear you're a different person."

"I am," she declared, pointing a senbon at him, "We're two different entities. Shunei used earth release while I use wind release." She recalled the special paper that Sasori had given her and how it ripped into two when she touched it. "Oddly enough, the Gendari can be used for both releases..."

"You also have to keep in mind," Sasori added from his workbench, "That the Gendari were passed down by generation, meaning it was probably used by numerous different chakra-typed users. I imagine that it was adapted for that purpose."

"Where'd you get those things anyway?" Deidara asked pointing down to the Gendari that were attached to her thighs.

"From Shunei's family back in Takigakure, it's a Gorex family tradition apparently," Marionette explained, pulling one of the two boomerang blades to show Deidara.

From outside the door Kakuzu remarked, "I killed a Gorex once..."

"Master, will you ever take me on any missions?" the puppet girl asked, sticking the last of her senbons into the crown. Deidara and Sasori glanced to one another in suspicion, "I mean, you did build me as a weapon, but you never use me as one."

Deidara took his leave, "I think I'm going to take a bath."

When the blonde was gone and the door was completely closed, Sasori swiftly turned to the puppet girl, "How much did you hear?"

"Something about a jinchuriki and Suna?" she stood up with the crown, "You aren't going to go run off on one of those missions and leave me again are you?" She advanced towards Sasori and grabbed his cloak, sobbing, "Please don't leave me again Master!"

Sasori slid off of his stool and said nothing.

"I want to be used Master, why won't you let me fight alongside you?" she continued to sob. Sasori opened his arms and let her fall into his embrace, "I don't want to be alone again Master…"

"You won't," he began to explain; "It's just another mission for Akatsuki. Everything is all planned out, it should be a cinch."

She held up the new crown, "I tried to make a new one for you, like how you fixed up mine."

He took the crown from her hands and plopped it on his head, "I like it, thank you Marionette." She grabbed onto his cloak and continued to sob, "Please stop Marionette, I'll only be gone for a week. You've survived without me before."

"But…that was different, things have changed now," she cried, "I left because I didn't want to be apart anymore!"

He brushed her hair away from her face and rubbed her back, "I haven't even left yet, please stop crying. You're soaking my cloak." But she continued to cry, "King Sasori commands you to stop crying."

Marionette pulled away from him and let out a few more sniffs, "As you command King Sasori." She returned to her seat on his bed, "Sasori…?"

He sat down on his stool across from her, "Yes?"

"If I die first, I want you to know," she turned away and began to sniffle again, "I'll wait for you wherever we're to go, be it Heaven or not." Looking back at him, directly in his eyes she asked, "Will you promise to wait for me?"

"When that time comes," he began his solemn promise to her, "I promise you, I'll wait for you wherever we're to go, be it Heaven or Hell. And I promise I'll watch over you until you make it there."

Marionette burst out into tears, "Master Sasori…?"

"Yes?"

"Is this what they mean by love?"

"That's what the humans call it."


	20. Chapter 20

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

* * *

**-20-  
**

Then came that fateful day; the day before Sasori and Deidara would have to leave on their important Akatsuki mission. Marionette decided that if it would be the last time she and Sasori would be together for at least a week, than they'd savor it to its fullest. She had some important plans for the day. Even Deidara decided that he would enjoy his last day at the base before the mission-by spending it all sleeping. Or at least, he tried to.

Their day began with Marionette shaking Sasori awake early that morning, shouting, "We can't waste a single moment sleeping!"

When Sasori finally sat up in bed and scratched his head, he asked her, "Why so early though?"

"Sunrise! We're going to watch the sun rise Master!" she clapped her hands together merrily; "We've never done that before!"

"We haven't done _a lot_ of things together yet," he mumbled as he got out of bed. Marionette walked with him outside to the entrance of the base, where the sun was just beginning to come up from the west. The two laid down by the patch of roses which had supplied their rose crowns and laid back, "You know I don't like waiting…"

"But Master, if this is the last day we spend together for a while, I want to make the most of it," she reminded him, grabbing his side and cuddling into him, "It won't take forever at least."

Sasori brought his arm around her and rubbed her back, "Only my art is eternal."

"My love for you is eternal as well Master," she corrected him as she nuzzled his side.

The sky began to light up with colors, which reminded Marionette of the first dream she had had when she first awoke. She thought back to it, trying to recall the exact details of it. With a short shake of the head, she returned her focus to the sky above her like Sasori was. Bright shades of orange and pink painted it as the two continued to watch. Marionette stared so deeply into the sky that it seemed as though she was looking for a spot up there, for …something.

When the sun had finally made its way into the sky and it was officially day time, Marionette rolled out of Sasori's arm and shot blue chakra strings out of her fingers and onto him. Even though he knew that he could easily break them, the puppet master allowed himself to be led back inside by his marionette. Moving her fingers around to guide his steps, she led the puppet master back to his room. With several more movements of her fingers, she forced Sasori to sit on his bed before breaking the strings herself so she could dig through her pockets.

"So what are we doing next?" Sasori asked, watching her dig around frantically.

She continued to dig around the holders, even throwing the two boomerang blades into the ceiling in annoyance, "Give me a moment…"

"You do realize that we're going to have to pay Kakuzu to fix the ceiling now right?" he asked, pointing up at the ceiling where the Gendari had ripped two large holes into.

"I know, but it can wait," she finally found what she was looking for and pulled it out, hiding it in her palm. Sasori stared at her closed hand expectantly, "I have a gift for you Master!"

She held the ring out to him, "Shunei's engagement ring and her fiancé's, I figured it would be nice to pass them on…"

"Thank you Marionette," he examined the ring, the one from Doki's corpse was not cheaply made at all. Actually, with the effort Doki had put into his own ring, it would seem that he had been marrying himself. He gave her a smirk, "Is this supposed to indicate something or are you just putting the thought out there?"

She slipped Shunei's on her own hand, "Well, I already told you I'd serve you forever. I guess this just makes it official."

"Then it's official." A large smile grew on Marionette's face, as Sasori laughed, "Just think of what Deidara'll say when he hears about this!"

Marionette laughed with him, attempting to mimicking Deidara, "Ew, does this mean crazy puppet sex, _hmm_!"

"I hope you don't create crazy puppet babies, _hmm_!" mimicked Sasori as well.

"Don't tell me I'm the crazy puppet babies' uncle, _hmm_!"

"It feels good to just sit and laugh for once," the puppet master admitted, "I haven't been able to do that for a long time." Marionette sat down on Sasori's bed next to him, resting her head on his shoulder. "Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like had my parents not died. I probably wouldn't have started making puppets."

"I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Shunei had not died and you hadn't rebuilt me," she softly added, "It seems that death has brought us together in the most unlikely fashion."

"I wish it didn't take so much sadness and pain to bring about joy," Sasori lowered his head. Marionette wrapped her arms around him and embraced him tightly, and the two sat still for several moments just taking everything in.

Then the puppet girl spoke, "Sometimes I wonder if this is what Heaven is like, being with you."

Sasori wrapped his arms around her back, "Maybe it is." Marionette leaned her head on his head and kissed his cheek. He held her face and kissed her back on the lips. The puppet master laid back, with the puppet girl lying next to him, holding onto one another and kissing each other passionately.

Without any warning, Deidara flung the door opened and called, "Sasori!" Then, noticing what was going on, he turned away from the two, "I'm sorry to interrupt your crazy puppet sex, but the boss wanted to talk to us about the mission tomorrow, hmm."

Sasori sighed and let Marionette go, leaving his bed then following Deidara out, "I'll be back soon, Marionette, I'll see you then lover."

"I'll see you then, lover," she called after him with tears filling her eyes. She laid down on Sasori's bed with her blanket in her arms and waited. Hours passed, and Marionette continued to wait for him to return. When he did return later, Sasori returned to find Marionette asleep, he laid beside her, setting an arm protectively around her sleeping body and resting his head atop her shoulder.

"Mhm, Master…," she softly spoke to him while half-asleep.

"I'm here Marionette, I'm here," he reassured her, "Let your King Sasori do the protecting this time." Marionette turned on her other side and snuggled into him.

"Goodnight King Sasori."

"Goodnight Queen Marionette."


	21. Chapter 21

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

_Thanks again for reading and reviewing and stuff everyone!_

* * *

**-21-**

When Marionette awoke the next morning, she was alone. Not just physically alone, but emotionally alone as well. She didn't want to have to wait a week to see her lover. Just the seconds so far were beginning to feel like centuries of waiting. When she sat up she noticed that Sasori's rose crown was sitting on his workbench. She assumed that he had left it there because he didn't want to ruin it or something during his mission. She sighed, thinking of how she would be alone for the next week with absolutely nothing to do.

The puppet girl stood up and walked out the front entrance of the base, where it was once again bright and sunny out, she put on her rose crown and decided to stroll down to her body's first occupant's sister, Kanshi. The forest was eerily silent that morning; she couldn't see a single animal that day no matter how silent she was. It made her feel even more nervous about her lover and his mission. It all made her think of her first dream again.

She remembered the sunrise's colors the previous day and the many colors from her dream. Then being held in the arms of a man she couldn't see, which reminded her of Sasori's hold. It made her miss him even more so. As she continued to try recalling her dream, the harder it was to do. The puppet girl recalled something about being taken places; even now she couldn't remember where she had been taken. Only that she had been taken _somewhere_.

Marionette continued to wander towards the border to Takigakure, not giving the strange shadows that stalked her any thought. A little before the sun set, she arrived at Kanshi's shack, which was oddly dark inside. She went to knock on the door, but as soon as she did, it opened yet with no one behind it. The puppet girl entered the suspicious homestead with her hands hovering above the holders to her Gendari; she feared someone had attacked Kanshi.

Once she stood in the center of the house she called, "Show yourselves."

Almost instantly, the lights came on and she could see that she was surrounded by several masked nin, one of which who held her seemingly unconscious friend. The tallest one stepped in front of her and spoke, "One of my employers is not very happy about the status of his son." She assumed that these men were assassins sent by Doki's father, "You understand."

"I'm afraid I don't," Marionette scoffed as she rested her flesh hand over her eye, "Maybe I'll get the answer off of one of your corpses."

The five masked nin and their leader all unsheathed their blades, preparing them for the cue to strike, while their leader spoke, "I'm afraid that the only corpse here will be yours."

The puppet girl shoved her index and middle finger into her right eye socket, pulling out the eye, but hiding the movements with the back of her hand, "You're a bit too late, I'm already part corpse," she crushed the eye ball and a mist of the paralyzation poison that Sasori had created the eye of instantaneously spread around the air.

"What...is this?" the leader grunted, having breathed some in himself. He continued to struggle to move as did his subordinates, "Can't...move..."

Marionette moved her hand up to the rose crown and pulled several poison-tipped senbon out of it, "The paralyzation poison you all breathed in was created by my Master to be used with the special poison that tips these senbon." She took two senbon into her false hand and stuck one in each of the leader's eyes, "You'll be paralyzed for a day as your muscles deteriorate. In the meantime, you'll have three days to live before you die from the poison on the needles. And if you manage to survive that; you'll have bled to death from your eyes." The puppet girl pulled out more senbon, sending them into the eyes of the other five masked nin.

"Because you harmed my friend, you will slowly perish," she growled, watching as the masked nin all fell to the floor around her in agony. Kanshi fell from the grip of the masked nin who held her, Marionette grabbed her from the floor and threw her over her shoulder, kicking the door back open with her foot and storming away.

Marionette realized that in poisoning the masked nin, she had also poisoned Kanshi. However, her lover had created an antidote for the paralyzation poison in case of a situation where someone like Deidara had been caught in the effect. So the puppet girl carried the unconscious young woman back to the base in the night as her muscles slowly deteriorated.

As she ran, she wanted to use the air pressure tubes in her feet to blast back to the base, but worried that using it would drain too much of her energy and leave her defenseless in case of a surprise attack. To make things worse, she also only had one eye and would continue to bleed out of the empty socket of the other until she used the jutsu to regenerate her that Sasori left in a scroll in the supply closet that was once her room.

Two more of the masked nin appeared ahead of her, weapons drawn, Marionette reached down grab the Gendari with one hand and hold Kanshi with her other, "Hang in there Kanshi...it's only a little while left." The two masked nin raced towards her and swung, one slashed at her leg and the other, attempted to stab Kanshi. Marionette swiftly turned before his blade connected with the unconscious girl and instead, sliced Marionette in the ribs.

As Marionette turned around to see where her opponents had jumped to, she noticed ten more masked nin waiting. These weren't shadow clones either, all were living mercenaries. The puppet girl looked behind her to see another group had appeared; she had been caught in an ambush.

"Well, well, well," another seemingly higher ranking mercenary called, "It looks like you're caught. It sure was hard getting work after the old man left, do you know how much money he'd pay us to go out and just kill for him?" She noticed that he also wore a Takigakure headband with a slice through it.

Marionette growled, pulling Kanshi from over her shoulder and holding her to her chest, "The old man who used to live in the shack?"

"You knew him, of course you knew him- Shunei!" Marionette was shocked by the masked nin's correct identification of her, "Do you know how much he paid us for your corpse? And all we had to do was drag you on one of our missions again!" He laughed and pointed a finger at her, "I don't know how you came back to life, but it looks like you're going to die the same way you did last time!" He motioned to his sides where more masked nin appeared from behind the trees, "What are you going to do now Shunei?"


	22. Chapter 22

**_Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc._**

* * *

**-22-**

Marionette looked around, masked nin jumped up almost every second she waited, surrounding her. She had to act quickly and act smart if she had any hope of saving herself or Kanshi. But seeing the masked nin surround her brought to her a memory, only lasting a second in reality, which seemed so vivid and realistic.

"Shunei!" came the voice of a teenager. She saw the adult, Shunei turn to a younger girl running towards her, "Shunei don't go!" The young girl grabbed onto Shunei's coat, attempting to pull her back, "Don't listen to what our parents say, please don't go!"

It was raining hard that day; Shunei looked up to the sky, letting the rain pour down on her face saying simply; "I cannot do that Kanshi." Kanshi continued to tug on her, "Kanshi, I am a shinobi; I cannot simply refuse to go on an assigned mission. Even you have heard about how they've punished those who have before, haven't you."

"But Shunei, this is a risky job, I don't want you getting hurt," she tugged on her again, "Please just come home."

"No Kanshi, I will not go home," she pulled herself from Kanshi's grip and continued towards her team, who were waiting for her, "I am no longer welcome there."

"Shunei, if you promise not to go, we can find another place to live!" the girl tried reasoning with her, but Shunei continued to walk towards her team.

She looked back one last time at Kanshi, "When it comes down to it, I'll end up being the first one dead anyway, so don't waste your life away."

Marionette returned to reality, holding Kanshi close to herself and moving her body around her then bringing her hand up to her remaining eye, pulling it out of its socket and into her hand. The masked nin all sprang out towards her at once. As they closed in, stabbing into her vitals, she crushed the eye and within seconds they all fell around her.

The puppet girl couldn't see the many bodies of the masked nin who were surrounding her, but through the pain, and with many kunai still stuck in her, she began to walk in the direction she was sure the base was. She heard more movement behind her and turned her hand cannon to the sound, spraying the area with flames that quickly spread around the bodies and trees. As the forest began to go up in flames, she tapped her feet to the ground and shoot forward through the burning forest to where the base would be.

The puppet girl and her charge were actually very close to it, and managed to escape the burning forest that surrounded them. Marionette felt her way around the stone exterior, pushing open the door with one hand as she continued to hold onto Kanshi. She felt along the walls to the right side of the base where Sasori's room and the supply closet she once occupied were. Marionette kicked the door to the supply closet and walked in, feeling around to where the bed was and setting Kanshi down onto it. Sitting on the desk was the scroll that was used to summon her eyes.

Marionette felt around the desk then grabbed it, unrolling it and taking some of the blood that flowed from her eye sockets with one hand and tracing a set of kanji onto the scroll. Then with a hand seal, two new eyes appeared, the puppet girl grabbed them, pushing them into their sockets. She spent a moment making sure her eyes were in correctly then brought her attention to the unconscious girl that was lying on her bed.

The puppet girl opened one of the cabinet doors and pulled out one of three small vials containing the antidote. She took it over to the young girl, pulling several kunai out of her body in order to sit down. Marionette forced Kanshi's mouth open then poured all of the liquid down Kanshi's throat, massaging it the way down so that she would digest it. She waited several minutes, and then Kanshi's eyes slowly opened.

"Big sister...," she whispered when she saw Marionette sitting by her with numerous weapons hanging out of her and blood dripping down her eyes and back, "What happened?"

"There is no time to explain Kanshi," she spoke, breathing heavily, "I don't have that much time left...I'm dying Kanshi."

"No!" the young woman sat up, "This can't be!" Kanshi tried to use a healing jutsu on Marionette's wounds but the puppet girl grabbed her hands to stop her.

"Please...don't interfere with fate," she gulped then spit up blood, "I want you to bring me to my lover, he went to Suna on a mission...I want to die serving him."

"You won't make it to Suna in this condition," she insisted, breaking from the puppet girl's weak grip and continuing to try and heal as many of the puppet's wounds as she could.

"He went to Suna, but the closest Akatsuki base by Suna is in the River Country," the puppet girl explained while she was healed, "There's a map of all of the Akatsuki bases in Sasori's desk, I believe they will be going to the one in the River Country."

Kanshi grabbed the blanket off of the bed and began using it to wipe away the blood, "Do you think that you'll make it there?"

"I have the will to go anywhere my Master might need me," she smiled as she said this, pulling open the drawer to the desk and taking out the map, "If we hurry it will only take maybe two days."

"Are you sure about this Marionette?" the younger woman asked, moving to her face and wiping the blood that dripped from her eye sockets.

"This is the only thing I'm sure of right now," she brought her hands up, "My purpose was to serve and so I will. But first I will pass on a jutsu passed onto me in case I die along the way."

"What is it...?" Kanshi watched as blue strings of chakra shot out of her fingers and onto Kanshi's limbs.

"It's called the Puppet Technique," with several movements of her fingers, Marionette guided Kanshi into the same position with her hands out, "You just concentrate your chakra into the tips of your fingers and shoot." She broke her strings from Kanshi, "Try it." Kanshi began to concentrate her own chakra into her fingers, and then shot out small strings onto Marionette's limbs, "Maybe one day, you'll be as good as Master Sasori."

"Are you still sure about this?" Kanshi asked, "I can take you to some kind of hospital, they can save you!"

"No, I won't be denied Heaven again."

By night, the majority of the forest surrounding the base had been burned to the ground along with the shack that Roishi had passed to Kanshi. Shinobi of Takigakure took care in extinguishing the flames before they made their way to the village and were surprised to see the many charred bodies in the forest. Kanshi and Marionette disguised themselves in hooded cloaks and set off into the night towards the River Country. They made their way from the border of Kusa to the Fire Country then continued into the River Country. The journey in total took about three days of nonstop walking and most of the energy from the both of them.

Kanshi looked down at the map, "So where is the base supposed to be?" There was a symbol for Takigakure and another northwest that stood for the base. The young woman and puppet girl stood by a river west of Takigakure. Kanshi glanced over to Marionette who was clutching her chest and panting, "Are you sure you can make it in this condition?" The puppet girl nodded and the two continued to walk towards what they believed to be the base.

About an hour of walking later they came to the remains of the base as it had been completely destroyed in what appeared to be a battle, numerous puppets and weapons were to be found among the rubble. Marionette walked into the rubble past Kanshi, who let her go ahead and watched. Once she got to the center of the area she froze and fell to her knees. Kanshi ran over to see if she was alright, then saw it herself; Sasori was dead with four swords and a kunai in his back.

Marionette lowered herself down and reached a hand out to his face, moving it as tears fell from her eyes. His gaze was unmoving, still, she set his head back down and fell on her side, "I failed Kanshi, I failed to protect him."

Kanshi walked beside her and knelt down, resting a hand on her shoulder to try to comfort her even though she knew that she couldn't, "It's not your fault."

"I should have gone anyway, fuck the rules," she continued to cry but then stopped and wiped her eyes, "At least we know that King Sasori is in Heaven now."

Kanshi couldn't help but start to form tears around her eyes as well, "Are you...are you...?"

"Yes," the puppet girl stopped her, rolled onto her back, stared up at the sky, and whispered, "I'm ready to go to Heaven too now." Kanshi took a step back; as Marionette continued to whisper to her, "Don't be sad."

"Are you sure you don't want to live?" the young woman asked, "There's still time to save yourself..."

"No," she waved her away, "I want to die. And when I have, when you're sure that my soul has departed into the next world. I want you to take my body and use it as a weapon, as it was intended to be used..." Kanshi fell to her knees and began to cry as the puppet girl spoke, "I want you to avenge your sister; I've killed most of those who allowed her to die. There's just one more left; the old man, Roishi. I want you to use this body as a weapon to kill him. But before you do so, practice, learn how to control my body to the fullest."

"Shunei I can't..."

Marionette put a finger to her lips and closed her eyes. She began to breathe more heavily and blood started to pour out from the sides of her mouth, "In my poc...pockets are the antidotes...to each of the poisons...that soak my weapons...and make up my eye. You can do this little sister...avenge me." Then Marionette opened her eyes and looked back up into the sky and said her last words;

_"Sasori, my love, if you can hear me…I'll be up there in a few minutes…..wait for me..."_

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_A/N: Well this is the end, thanks for reading, reviewing, favoriting, disliking, and following my story everyone. The epilogue isn't exactly necessary to read, but I think it brings some more closure. But well, again; thanks! I hope everyone enjoyed reading this because I enjoyed writing it, well not the last chapter, the last chapter was sad to write._


	23. Epilogue

_**Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Naruto or any of its trademarks, characters, places, etc.**_

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**-Epilogue-**

Two years passed since the death of Marionette and her lover, Sasori. Kanshi obeyed the puppet girl's final request and once she had died. The young woman took the puppet body in disguise and fled to Kusagakure to practice the Puppet Technique in secret. Learning the many secrets embedded into the loving design made by the Puppet Master himself, Kanshi mastered her sister's puppet body to the point where she was confident in her ability to take down the old hag.

Kanshi then packed up her things and ventured out to find the traveling cannibal named Roishi. The day she never thought she'd see had come. Journeying in the deserts of Suna with a cloth pack of bodies on his back wandered the old man. When he noticed Kanshi with the puppet Marionette in tow approaching him, he was not surprised.

"I thought I said you weren't supposed to come after me!" he joked, recalling the day he had given her his old shack outside of Takigakure, "And here you are, obviously here for my head of course."

"You were responsible for my sister's death," she called through the blazing sandstorm, "I can't let you escape justice."

"What if I tried to make you a deal kiddo?" he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet, "How much can I give you to let me go?" He shuffled through his wallet, pulling out ryo and setting it in his hand.

"You can't buy your life from me, old man. I'm here for revenge!" with several movements of her fingers, she put Marionette's puppet into a fighting stance with her knees out, "Whenever you're ready old man."

"I guess we'll be fighting to your death then kiddo," he threatened, pulling out a kunai from his pocket.

"We'll just see about that!" Kanshi forced Marionette to fling out the Gendari, tapping the ground with both feet and grabbing the boomerang blades as she flew up.

"What an interesting little puppet you've got there," the old man laughed and swiftly performed several hand seals, "I've learned a few tricks from my meals!" He spat fireballs up at the puppet, which she glided around.

The young woman swiftly moved several fingers so that Marionette grabbed the chain from her abdomen and hooked it around the two Gendari, throwing the one in her false arm out then following it up with a stream of flames from her palm cannon. To dodge the flames, Roishi moved right in the way of the Gendari's chain. It tightly wrapped itself around the old man, grounding him while Marionette aimed the other boomerang blade.

"How impressive," he cackled then spat fire at the chain, trying to melt it. With another sleight of hand, the puppet girl sent the other Gendari out and Kanshi watched as it looped around and impaled the old man. He fell to the ground in the chains and Kanshi made Marionette dropped to the ground to check her opponent's body. As the puppet paced towards him, his head shot back up and he spat out a drop of blood. "I'm not done yet kiddo!"

The old man spat out a field of smoke around them, if it wasn't already difficult to see with the sandstorm, the smoke made it impossible. Instead of allowing her puppet to be caught in it, Kanshi tugged for Marionette so she would tap her heels and shoot back several yards away from the smoke cloud.

"No one said I was either old man," she called back as the puppet opened up its back and pulled out the poison-barbed spike. Marionette threw it through the smoke, sure that it had hit the old man when the spike stopped being fed chains from the puppet's abdomen. Miraculously, Marionette's spike came flying back and impaled her, sending the puppet flying back to Kanshi. As the smoke cleared, the young woman could see the man was unchained and manically laughing.

"Hahahaha, looks like I got you there!" he called as blood dripped from her mouth. As the old man stomped over to attack Kanshi, Marionette ripped one of her eyes out and crushed it as Kanshi bit into a capsule of the antidote that she had strategically placed in her mouth. The paralyzation poison Sasori had invented quickly dispersed into the air, with Roishi breathing it in and falling to the ground a few feet from her.

"What is this!" he shouted

"A little poison my big sister's lover made," Kanshi smirked as she took the opportunity to pull the spike from her puppet. She walked over to the paralyzed old man with the spike in one hand, "Looks like I have the last laugh!"

With that she impaled it into him then turned around and pulled, while walking back to her puppet, effectively dragging the dying old man with her. Once she reached it, she ripped out the chain that attached the spike to Marionette and tossed it over by Roishi's body. Kanshi picked the puppet up and glanced back over at Roishi who was still holding onto his life.

"I hope you go to Hell," she spat, then walked off into the Suna sunset.

So came about the end to our story.

The young woman took the puppet girl created by the puppet master of the Akatsuki, Sasori, with her on her later adventures. With the puppet, Kanshi carried the memories and legacy of her sister and her identity as Marionette forever. When Kanshi finally settled down and raised a family, she promised to pass the puppet and technique onto her own child. In the meantime, she continued to care for the puppet body of her late sister, taking note of the delicate care the puppet's previous master had put into her creation.

Like Sasori's art, the love he put into his Marionette was **eternal**.

**-End-**


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